


Descant

by embolalia



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mentions of past child abuse, canon character death, mentions of torture, other death too but mostly Cylons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:26:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2519099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cylons reach New Caprica, but Leoben never kidnaps Kara. The course of the stream shifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**_Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted._ **

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley  
 ****

**Part One  
**  
  
Kara scans the marketplace surreptitiously, keeping her head down the way everyone has in the two days since the Cylons arrived. The early fall air is still warm but they’re all wearing layers, identities hidden away.  
  
He’s here somewhere, she can feel it.  
  
Sam’s voice shook when he told her about Leoben; he wanted her to hide out, lay low. The President’s eyes widened in fear as she remembered what they did to him.  
  
Kara’s not afraid. Instead she’s tingling with curiosity, with an eagerness she can’t explain to see him again, to see if his soul survived.  
  
  
From across the mass of people, Leoben watches Kara, sees her wandering path move her closer and closer to him. He tries to be patient, tries to remember what Boomer said back on the basestar.  
  
She’d smiled, staring down at the planet as they approached, murmured, “Tyrol’s down there.”  
  
“And Gaius.” Caprica smiled, too.  
  
“And Kara.”  
  
Caprica nodded absently, but Boomer turned to him in confusion. “Starbuck tortured you.”  
  
Leoben gazed down at the planet. “She’ll love me, I’ve seen it.”  
  
Boomer stared at him, wary. “She doesn’t know that.”  
  
He tries to keep in mind now that the memories of Kara writhing with pleasure in his arms, crying out her love, are his alone. Even so, his pulse races as she draws nearer.  
  
She comes to the edge of the bubble the crowd has left around him and stops. Their eyes meet, neither surprised.  
  
For a long moment they are still. Then Kara starts to raise her hand, a gesture he’s played over a thousand times, and Leoben goes wild with joy. She stares at him in wonder.  
  
“Kara!” Her husband is there then, glaring at him, pulling her away even as she elbows him off of her. They are almost immediately lost in the swirling crowd.  
  
*  
  
Kara follows Sam into the tent. “So?”  
  
He glances back at the flap, then quickly lifts the rug and the panel it hides. “This is where the they dug the basement for Baltar’s house before he announced he’d stay on Colonial One. Foundation’s still good.” He waves and she descends the stairs, nods in appreciation as she takes in the large underground chamber.  
  
“This’ll do.”  
  
“Starbuck,” Tigh barks with a nod.  
  
“Captain.”  
  
Kara acknowledges Tigh and Tyrol, takes in Barolay and Duck and Nora with a glance, then frowns, looks back and forth between them in agitation. “The president’s late?”  
  
Duck shakes his head. “I saw them take her.”  
  
“Frak,” Kara hisses.  
  
Behind her Sam starts coughing. She whirls, reaching out to him as he clutches his chest, unable to stop for a full minute. When Kara turns back around the others are watching her. For a moment she meets Tigh’s eyes, but he just gives a slight nod and waits. “Alright,” she says finally. “What do we know?”  
  
They don’t know enough. They don’t know what the cylons really want, or what’s happening to Roslin, or whether Galactica has survived. But Kara’s not taking back her words: she’ll fight until she can’t.  
  
*  
  
She lies awake that night, listening to Sam’s hacking in the darkness. Their bed trembles with the force of it. Eventually she wraps an arm around him from behind, presses her cheek against his back. Kara imagines she can hear the fluid in there. If only she’d gotten him help. For a moment Lee’s voice springs to mind, his tight, hollow tone as he picked up the phone and said her name. She hopes he’s alive out there, somewhere.  
  
Kara distracts herself with thoughts of the resistance. She was proud of Sam today, of the way he sat the group down and lectured on guerrilla tactics against the cylons for a solid hour. It’s a shame more military didn’t make it down to the planet, but she’s got a good group and more will join once they get organized. Sam was right though, they’re not ready yet. Right now they need to be deft and quiet and strategic. She curls closer to his heat.  
  
Her hand rubs Sam’s chest through a cough. She went back to Cottle after the meeting; the antibiotics stores are completely gone. Kara holds onto him tighter as he gasps for breath, suddenly terribly afraid that all the horror she missed with her mother is coming soon, and for Sam.  
  
There’s not even any more fear left to feel when she realizes, all in a rush, what it is she’ll have to do.  
  
*  
  
He waits for her, right there. Night came, and his body was cold, shivered in the starlight. The morning warmed him. Leoben didn’t notice. He has seen it before: Kara Thrace, emerging from the stream of people, walking up to him, ready for him to lead her to her destiny. Even when nothing else is clear in his visions, he knows one thing with the certainty of prophecy: Kara will bring them all home.  
  
When it finally happens it takes him a moment to realize; the air is gritty, the daylight is harsh, a thousand myriad details impinge on the certainty he’s always felt in this moment.  
  
“Can we talk?” Kara asks, her eyes measuring him.  
  
It hits him forcefully, and Leoben grins. “Yes,” he says, “yes.” He turns, knows she is following him as he heads away from the market.  
  
As they near the concrete bunkers the Centurions have been busily assembling, Kara stops.  
  
Leoben faces her.  
  
“I need something,” Kara says quickly. “Antibiotics. For someone with pneumonia.”  
  
He nods, frowns for a moment as reality shakes loose from his visions and he must live it alone. “I can get that.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
She’s waiting, still, and his heart begins to beat harder as he realizes for what: Kara has come here expecting to give him something, expecting to bargain. “Dinner,” he spits out. “Come have dinner with me. I’ll give you the drugs.”  
  
Kara considers him. “Fine,” she says. “But it has to be tonight. He needs them soon.”  
  
Leoben smiles after her as she walks away.  
  
*  
  
She doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going. They wouldn’t understand.  
  
Pain for pain is all she’s ever known. She hid bugs; her mother broke her fingers. She punched Lee; he hit right back. She tells Sam she doesn’t have to explain herself to him and he tells her she could try being his wife. Kara threw everything she had at Leoben, every ounce of pain. He could have killed her and instead he gave her a prophecy. If it’s coming for her tonight, she deserves it. And if it doesn’t she might just save Sam’s life.  
  
Leoben leads her into the bunker, into a windowless cell incongruously filled with a dining table and chairs.  
  
“This is...creepy,” Kara mutters as she takes a seat.  
  
Leoben looks up, crestfallen. “I tried to make it nice.”  
  
She shakes her head. “No windows? Feels more like a prison.”  
  
He tilts his head. “The Galactica didn’t have many windows.” When Kara only shrugs, he lifts a cover off of a dish. “Steak?”  
  
Kara blinks at it in surprise, then at him. “Yes!”  
  
He nods. “First we pray.” He holds out his hands across the table.  
  
She studies him carefully, then lays her palms upon his. Leoben’s fingers close around hers, warm and firm. Kara closes her eyes as he prays and feels the faint beat of his pulse in his wrist.  
  
His voice is measured and deep. “Heavenly father, we thank you for your many gifts, among them this food and the love which binds the universe.” Leoben gently releases her.  
  
Kara’s eyes open. “Thank the Gods,” she murmurs, and reaches for her fork.  
  
They eat in silence for a while, though Kara can feel Leoben watching her. Once her hunger has abated, she leans back in her chair. “Why did you come here? What is it that you want?”  
  
He smiles fondly. “Interrogating me again, Kara?”  
  
Her expression falters for a moment. “You have Caprica. You have Kobol. You have the whole rest of space! Why come here, why keep pursuing us?”  
  
Leoben watches her, his eyes flickering for a chilling second toward the door, toward the lock. “The futures of our races are entwined, Kara. You are the right hand of humanity, and we the left. We need each other.”  
  
“You’re not human,” she says pointedly.  
  
He smiles faintly, sticks his fork into a chunk of potato and raises it to his lips, chewing slowly.  
  
Kara shakes her head. “Well I don’t believe in destiny anyway.”  
  
“Alright.” He nods, smiling slightly, clearly not accepting her words. Continues to eat his food.  
  
  
When she’s finished, Kara rises and Leoben leads her back toward the open door. His hand clenches for a moment on the handle. He has had so many glimpses of their future, but none of this moment. Destiny has receded and God has left the choice to him. He could keep her here, if he wanted to. He wants to. But Boomer’s words ring in his ears: Kara doesn’t know yet that she loves him.  
  
Kara looks sharply at him, waiting for the door to slam.  
  
“This way,” he says softly, and walks through it.

  
  
Outside again, on the margin of untamed land between the cylon buildings and the settlement, Kara stops and waits for Leoben to turn to her.  
  
“Thank you,” she says softly, knowing he could have closed the door, that part of him wanted to. Knowing that she would never have let him go free.  
  
A smile spreads across his face, brightens his eyes. For the first time she sees his beauty. Kara leans up and presses a kiss to his cheek. This close she can smell him, a faint trace of sweat. It reminds her of when they met. Reminds her he’s a man. The kiss lasts a moment too long and then his head is turning, Leoben’s lips are covering her own.  
  
Kara’s pulse hammers as the kiss goes on, as his arms wrap around her waist and her hands are suddenly clutching his shoulders. She pauses a second to breathe, rests her forehead against his chest. Leoben’s hand runs lightly up and down her back and Kara shivers, wanting him. He’s saving Sam’s life after all, and he’s let her go when he doesn’t have to. It’s a better excuse than some she’s used.  
  
“God,” Leoben murmurs, stroking her hair, and it’s the strangeness of the word, the singular, that makes her pull back. Kara stares up at him a long moment, then steps away.  
  
For a moment his eyes flash with frustrated desire, then it fades. “Here.” He holds up a vial of pills he’s pulled out of his pocket.  
  
Kara’s hand closes over them. She frowns at the sudden implication that this has been a transaction. “I didn’t--” she starts, and then falls silent.  
  
Leoben nods. “Someday you’ll hold me in your arms, Kara, and tell me you love me. I’ve seen it.”  
  
She frowns, stepping back, blinking at him warily. “I could never love you.” Even to her ears it sounds half-hearted.  
  
“You know better than that, Kara. You know my soul.” He waits, watching her.  
  
Kara stares at him a moment longer, then turns and leaves, resisting the urge to run, resisting the urge turn back.


	2. Chapter 2

“And once Sam gets far enough away, you set it off.”  
  
“Boom,” Barolay mutters.  
  
“Yeah,” Kara says tightly. “Boom.”  
  
“And we all hope like hell he hasn’t started coughing and given us away,” Tyrol grumbles.  
  
Kara glares, but she doesn’t argue. He’s not wrong.  
  
“Captain, where is he?” Tyrol asks softly.  
  
She folds up the scraps of paper with the layout of the detention center, tosses them into the fire. “Any questions?”  
  
They glance at each other and back to her.  
  
“Good,” Kara bites out. “We’ll meet here at nightfall.”  
  
She slips out of the tent carefully, checking up and down the alley for Cylons before she emerges. Taking a deep breath Kara sets her pace to a stroll, moves unhurriedly toward the main thoroughfare. Tigh has been taken in the past week since the President went missing, and Zarek, and a host of others. She keeps alert beneath her nonchalance.  
  
Kara worries her lip as she walks. Sam shouldn’t have missed this meeting. Cottle said the antibiotics were the real thing and Sam should be getting better by now. The doctor is the only one who has any idea what she did; Sam just thinks his knowledge of resistance fighting was worth a few doses from the stockpiled meds.  
  
She grimaces. He may need to rest, but a soldier would know to show up when ordered to without complaint. Kara’s halfway to pissed off by the time she reaches their home.  
  
“Hey,” she calls out as she lifts the tent flap. “What the frak, Sam? You missed the whole thing.”  
  
He’s in bed, face relaxed in sleep. Kara sighs, sitting down by his knees and pulling off her boots. “Hey.” She squeezes his leg. “Time to get up.” Unease settles in her gut when he doesn’t answer. “Sam?” She reaches out, fingers trembling suddenly, and lays her hand across Sam’s forehead, feeling for fever.  
  
His skin is icy to the touch.  
  
“No,” Kara gasps, flinching away. For a moment she struggles to breathe. “Sam?” she begs, hesitating before taking his hand. His fingers are stiff. “Sam.” She falls forward, her face pressed against his chest through the blanket. He still smells like himself. Still feels real enough to wrap his arms around her. Tears streak salty and hot down her cheeks.  
  
He’s gone.  
  
  
Some time later, as the sky darkens, Kara staggers through the streets again and down the stairs into their secret chamber.  
  
“Starbuck?” Tyrol asks in concern as he catches sight of her.  
  
She bites her lip, swallowing hard. Willing herself to say the words without crying. “Sam is dead.”  
  
Around the room, the others straighten, gasp, reach out. Barolay’s eyes fill with tears.  
  
“Did the Cylons--” Duck starts.  
  
Kara shakes her head. “No. The pneumonia--he was too sick.” Her eyes plead with all of them not to ask questions.  
  
“Did you move the body?” Tyrol takes her cue, turns them back to business.  
  
“No,” she says softly. “I’ll build him a pyre later, down by the river.”  
  
The others shift and nod.  
  
“It’ll do for an alibi,” Ellen offers. “We’ll all be there.”  
  
“You shouldn’t break curfew,” Kara says absently.  
  
The others trade glances over her head. “It’ll be fine, Captain,” Tyrol offers. “I’ll take Sam’s place. We won’t let the bastards win.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
  
Working methodically, Kara and Jean gather logs and branches, arranging them for the fire. No one suggested burial; she doesn’t have to explain that she won’t leave him behind on this waste of a planet when they go.  
  
The remaining C-Bucs arrive after a while with the body, Ellen trailing behind and keeping the black cloth he’s wrapped in from dragging on the ground. Duck and Tyrol have already begun the mission.  
  
Kara reaches out one last time as they lay Sam in place, pulls back the cloth to see her husband’s face. “I love you,” she whispers, tangling her fingers in the chain around his neck, her dogtag pressed into her palm. She steps back.  
  
The flames leap high in the night; the wood here burns hot and pungent, covering the smell of flesh.  
  
Across the settlement an explosion rocks the main Cylon building. The gathered resistance members flinch. Kara doesn’t blink.  
  
  
The bed of coals is glowing red in the darkness when Duck stumbles up, his hair singed and his eyes wild.  
  
“He stopped,” he says haltingly. “He just--he was about to be far enough away and I pulled the trigger and he just--he stopped--I don’t know why--” He continues, his words incoherent.  
  
Kara rises, slaps him across the face. “Is Tyrol alive?” she asks harshly.  
  
Duck shakes his head. “No, sir.”  
  
She nods once, tightly, sparing only a glance for the ashes of the fire before leading the way back into the camp. “We need to get out of sight quickly, before the Cylons do any sweeps.”  
  
“Captain, I’m s--”  
  
“Don’t,” Kara says, cutting him off. “This is war. Good men and women die in war. It’s what he signed up for. We have to keep going.”  
  
*  
  
As he walks up to the house, Leoben meets Caprica’s eyes where she’s sitting on the steps.  
  
“She won’t let me in,” his sister says softly.  
  
Leoben nods. “You get to have what she wants.”  
  
Caprica flinches at the words. “Gaius...blames me. He doesn’t say so but he does. For what we did. For how guilty he feels.”  
  
“So do you.”  
  
Her eyes open wide in surprise.  
  
“You love him,” Leoben says softly. “You wanted to save his entire race because you love him, and because you believe what we did was wrong.”  
  
Now Caprica nods.  
  
“It’s all part of the cycle,” he reminds her.  
  
She glances toward the house. “It’s not as perfect as she thinks.”  
  
“But it’s all she’s ever wanted.” Leoben rests his hand on her hair in silent benediction. “Go. I’ll stay with her a while.” Caprica smiles up at him and stands, disappears.  
  
Leoben climbs the steps, knocks lightly on the door.  
  
“Go away!” Boomer shouts from inside, her voice muffled by tears.  
  
He opens the door anyway. She’s curled up on the couch. Leoben steps over the shoes near the door, a forgotten doll.  
  
Boomer raises her head from his arms, turns to him with bloodshot eyes. Leoben doesn’t say anything, just sits and pulls his littlest sister against him and lets her cry.  
  
“I didn’t know,” Leoben says. “I would have told you.”  
  
She rests her forehead against his shoulder. “Why is it like this? Why would they make me love him like this? He didn’t,” she hiccups, “he didn’t even love me like this. He found someone else.” Boomer closes her eyes. “He wouldn’t even talk to me.”  
  
Leoben strokes her hair. “This isn’t programming, Sharon. Love is from God. It’s the closest we come to his will.”  
  
Boomer shakes her head. “It hurts too much. Don’t you know that? Don’t you see the way Kara loves Sam? And Lee?”  
  
He shrugs the words away. “I can see the bigger pattern.”  
  
She presses her hands over her face. “We were supposed to build this house together.”  
  
Leoben hugs her again, slowly unravels Boomer’s projection. When he pulls away they’re sitting in Kara’s apartment from Caprica, his own sanctuary.  
  
“We should leave,” Boomer says softly. “We should just go away and never look back.”  
  
Leoben squeezes her shoulder. “No,” he says firmly. “There is only one stream.”  
  
*  
  
Two weeks after Tyrol’s death, Cally goes into labor.  
  
Kara clutches her hands for hours, feeling her bones shift in Cally’s grip as she screams out in pain. “You can do this,” Kara promises the girl over and over, “Keep pushing!”  
  
It seems to take a eternity, and then suddenly it’s done and Cottle is cradling a baby in his arms: a boy. He cleans the baby, hands him gently to Cally.  
  
She smiles, for the first time in weeks.  
  
“What’s his name?” Kara asks reverently.  
  
“Nicholas,” Cally whispers, staring at him in wonder. Then she looks up at Kara. “Galen picked it out.” Her eyes flood with tears.  
  
Kara blinks her own vision clear.  
  
For the first few days, Kara stays with Cally in her tent, tending to her, getting over her own discomfort with the baby. It’s a shock when Cally asks her to leave.  
  
“I’m sorry he’s not here,” Kara says tightly. “I was just trying to help.”  
  
“I know,” Cally says, her tone hardening. “But they see you. A Boomer watched you come in here when you got back with the diapers. They know who you are. You’re putting us in danger.”  
  
And there it is. Kara can’t even deny it. She kisses Nicky goodbye and leaves.  
  
  
When she crosses the marketplace now, Kara sees the children, the few who survived the fall, the dozens of infants, the pregnant women filled with hope and worry. She sees the arms reaching out to pull little ones away from Centurions, from skin-jobs. Fiercely defensive, yet not willing to risk their lives, their children’s. They’re not soldiers anymore if they ever were. They have too much to lose. They’re already giving up.  
  
At night she sleeps restlessly, dreaming of Sam--and every once in a while, of Leoben.  
  
  
Without Tyrol and Sam the civilians are more skittish, harder to organize. They need to fill the ranks of the resistance--with civilians, former convicts, whatever it takes. She spends as much time on the pyramid courts now as Sam used to, murmuring under her breath to the players or sitting in the sidelines, leaning in close, speaking urgently under the cover of the crowd’s noise. She promises that Galactica will come, promises that the Cylons can be taken down if they find their weakness, promises that if they stand together they won’t fall. But the Cylons can get blown up and be back the next day; these are the only humans left, maybe in the universe, and they know it.  
  
  
Kara walks from place to place, one foot in front of the other, refusing to scurry away from the Centurions, to hide the way the rest of her people do these days. Then she turns a corner and sees a Centurion shoot a woman and has to swallow a scream as she darts back behind a tent. Peering out, she watches as a Doral spits on the body, mutters something about humans, and leaves her in the dirt.  
  
Her heart doesn’t stop racing for long minutes. She clenches her jaw, fighting for silence as tears of shock and despair track down her cheeks. She used to be a better soldier.  
  
  
On the nights when the Resistance doesn’t have missions, they dig graves. Out near Sam’s pyre the bodies of the dead lie in solemn, silent rows. At night sometimes Kara sits there with him, with them, and wonders how she’ll know when it’s not worth fighting anymore.  
  
*  
  
It’s easy enough to find him; she goes back to where they kissed and he’s sitting on a fallen log, arms wrapped around his knees, waiting for her.  
  
Kara sits silently beside him. For the first time in weeks, she’s enveloped by quiet.  
  
“It could all be like this,” Leoben says after a while.  
  
“Like what? Brutal repression of one people by another?”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be a war.” His voice is gravelly and calm.  
  
“You killed billions of us,” Kara answers.  
  
“You killed billions of us,” he echoes.  
  
She bites her lip, shrugs wearily. “So we go our separate ways, what happened to that plan?”  
  
“I told you. We couldn’t live without you.”  
  
Kara shakes her head dismissively.  
  
“Boomer loved Tyrol, Caprica loves Gaius. I love you. There’s truth in that, there’s God in that, Kara. We weren’t meant to be apart.” He smiles at her.  
  
Kara’s eyes are wide, incredulous. “Frak,” she breathes. Leoben reaches out, runs a finger down her cheek, over her lip.  
  
“Think of your mother, Kara. You can run away but it doesn’t stop someone from hurting you. You have to make peace, real peace.”  
  
She stares at him a moment longer, then gets up and walks away.  
  
*  
  
Kara takes the next mission herself; she asks Duck first but she sees the way he looks at Nora. Better it be her.  
  
It’s a simple job: get the bomb in and get out. Not her style, not usually. Sam’s. She tosses it under a van full of skin jobs and runs.  
  
“Kara!” Leoben shouts after her.  
  
She turns just in time to see his face contort in horror as his body turns to flame. The shockwave hurls Kara to the ground. She stares at the place where he stood, sobbing harshly. She lays there as darkness clouds her vision. Her head is aching. The world fades away.  
  
*  
  
D’Anna gasps to consciousness in a resurrection tub, awakening as if from a dream. A feeling lingers, something she has no name for. A baby was crying.  
  
*  
  
The moments when he’s in the stream, in between lives, are the times Leoben can see most clearly. When he opens his eyes the visions are a blur again, but this time there is something new left behind: a sense of imminence. It’s nearly time.  
  
He dries and dresses and heads out into the world, reborn.  
  
She’s curled on the ground, face dirty with tears and grit, right where he knew she’d be. Leoben lifts Kara gently in his arms, and carries her home.


	3. Chapter 3

Eight forks, eight spoons. Two curtains framing every window. Six chairs around the dining table. He can’t show her the truth of projection, can only give her this shadow of their home.  
  
But now, with her in it, the apartment is complete. Leoben lies beside Kara on the bed, staring, afraid to blink, unwilling to sleep. Her nearness is like a drug, mesmerizing him, quieting all the whispers that usually follow him. He hears only his own blood pounding in his ears. He can smell her, can feel the light breeze of her breath as he eases closer. For an instant he sees her cry out beneath him and his body hardens with need. Leoben breathes slowly, purges the physical from his thoughts. It is enough to be near her.  
  
  
Kara stirs slowly. The sheets around her are warm and soft and there’s a reason she should be sad that she doesn’t want to remember. Someone shifts beside her and for just a moment, just a fraction of a second, she thinks it’s Sam and her eyes open.  
  
A whimper escapes her lips: Sam is dead.  
  
Leoben wakes, his face transformed by joy at finding her beside him. He reaches out, his hand hovering over Kara’s cheek. When she doesn’t flinch, he rests it against her skin. “How are you feeling?” he asks, his voice rough with sleep.  
  
She opens her mouth to answer and winces. Her jaw is aching, and new pains are making themselves known: bruised ribs, the tightness of bandages on her arm. “What happened?”  
  
A shadow crosses his face. “You set off a bomb.”  
  
Kara’s eyes widen at the memory. “You died.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Her face contorts. She rests her hand against his cheek in turn, tracing the faint wrinkles, running her fingertips over his perfect facsimile of an eyebrow. “You’re still you?”  
  
He nods beneath her touch. “I won’t ever leave you, Kara.”  
  
She can feel the truth of it: unlike Lee, unlike Sam, unlike her father and Adama and Zak, this man will never go away. Something shifts, comes into focus.  
  
For an instant a smile touches her lips, and then she withdraws, sighing with appreciation as she shifts on the soft cushion of the mattress before swinging her legs over the side. “Leoben--” she says tightly, finding herself in only her underwear and tanks as she sits up.  
  
“Your clothes were burned,” he says evenly. “Dirty.”  
  
She nods, slides off the bed. Her injuries have been bandaged; he must have done that, too.  
  
Kara shuffles across the room, pulling on a shirt and pants that are a touch too small. Boomer’s size, she thinks, remembering the old days on Galactica and mixed up laundry. She slowly takes in the similarity to her old apartment. "Even creepier than the last place," she mutters. The window overlooks the settlement: neat rows of tents, dim and dusty in the harsh, unfocused light. Here and there it glints off the metal body of a Centurion. Her people swirl away from them, their motion visible from up here: a pattern, a purpose. Her people.  
  
She turns back to Leoben. He's watching her from a few yards away, patient, full of awe.  
  
"Why did you bring me here?"  
  
"You were in pain." His eyes are sincere.  
  
"Can I leave?"  
  
He's crestfallen for a moment. "The door isn't locked."  
  
Kara nods, glances back out the window. "I want to speak to the President. Not Baltar, Roslin. Can you do that?"  
  
Leoben hesitates. "Why?"  
  
She studies him. "Do you trust me?"  
  
"Yes," he answers at once.  
  
"I need to talk to her."  
  
*  
  
No one pays attention as they move through the halls of the detention facility. As they approach the occupied cells, Leoben draws to a halt.  
  
“What?” Kara whispers tightly.  
  
He exhales slowly, looking at the Four at the other end of the corridor passing food through a window into a cell. “They can’t see you like this, free.”  
  
Kara frowns.  
  
Leoben looks at her searchingly. “Do you trust me, Kara?”  
  
She stares at him a long time before answering. “I guess.”  
  
“Come here, then.” Leoben turns her away from him, tugs her arms gently so her wrists rest against the small of her back. He wraps his hand around them, tight enough that she couldn’t pull away if he wanted to stop her. His thumb strokes the pulse point at the inside of her wrist. Leoben takes a deep breath, inhaling the smell of her hair. “This way,” he murmurs.  
  
With a nod to the Four, Leoben guides Kara down the hall and quickly unlocks a thick metal door with his free hand.  
  
Light spills inside, across a dirty room. Laura Roslin is huddled in the corner.  
  
Kara pulls free as soon as the door closes, runs to the President.  
  
Laura’s eyes light up for just a moment, ecstatic, then fall closed in grief when she sees Leoben.  
  
  
It takes only a few minutes to realize that they’ll get nowhere as long as Leoben is in the room, so he leaves. He slips out the door and into the neighboring observation chamber, needing to see Kara.  
  
In the cell she’s explaining to Laura what losses they’ve taken, that the people are scared and hopeless. That there’s no strategy left that will do any good. That they can’t fight anymore. Her words fade as Leoben watches her. The stream seems to swirl around her, spirals of color staining the air. Destiny is happening right here, in front of him. Alone in the dim room he grins wildly.  
  
“We can’t give up,” Laura says, her voice strangled from disuse and dehydration.  
  
Kara stares at her a long moment, then looks up at the window so sharply that Leoben thinks she can sense him. “You were the one, back at Ragnar. The Admiral told me that, once. You were the one who knew we’d already lost and shouldn’t waste our lives fighting.”  
  
Laura Roslin sighs, looking for just a moment more like a tired schoolteacher than a president. “Baltar already surrendered,” she says flatly. “They have what they want.”  
  
“No,” Kara says slowly. “I don’t think they do.” She turns toward the window, and this time Leoben knows she is aware of him. She smiles grimly. “I need you to take us to your leaders.”  
  
*  
  
D’Anna stumbles through the streets, distracted by the events of the past hour. She’ll know love, the oracle told her. Will hold Hera in her own arms. Her mind scoffs, but her heart thrills to the idea, to the emotion she’s glimpsed on the faces of human mothers, of Gaius and Caprica in their weak moments. And Boomer. D’Anna grunts, shaking her head. They should all be boxed.  
  
*  
  
Leoben finds his sisters together, these two who planned everything, sitting at the edge of a lake. Boomer is staring out over the water, face blank with grief. Her head rests on Caprica’s shoulder as her sister presses a cheek to her hair. Leoben nods to Caprica, glad to find them anywhere but in the house Boomer built.  
  
“It’s time,” he says simply.  
  
Boomer looks up, blinking, sniffling. “For what?”  
  
Caprica doesn’t question, just tugs her sister to her feet.  
  
“This isn’t working,” he says. “But it will. You need to come with me.” They know him well enough that even Boomer smiles at his words. They follow him through the halls and back to Laura Roslin’s cell.  
  
The former president shrinks back against the wall as the Cylons enter, even as Boomer raises her hand in greeting. Kara stares at her in horror and fascination, takes in Caprica with a flare of recognition. Leoben crosses the room to stand shoulder to shoulder with Kara. The stream swirls around him now, too.  
  
Kara opens her mouth to speak, then stops, gaze fixed on Boomer’s reddened eyes. “I’m sorry about Chief,” she finally says.  
  
“Oh!” Boomer gasps, blinking hard, arms wrapping around herself.  
  
And Kara steps forward, hugs the younger woman tightly. Leoben hears her whisper, “We lost Sam, too,” and Boomer returns the hug.  
  
His eyes leap to Roslin, to her confusion and wonder at Kara’s display. He smiles.  
  
At last Kara withdraws. “We have to do things differently,” she says urgently, staring into Boomer’s face, still holding her hands. She turns to Caprica. “This isn’t what the Gods want. And I don’t think it’s what yours wants, either. If you came here for real peace--”  
  
“We did,” Caprica answers.  
  
Kara nods. “It can’t be this. Centurions in control, humans under guard. There’s no future in this except more people dying. There are few enough of us left as it is.” Her voice is hard but close to breaking, halfway between demanding and pleading.  
  
“We just wanted to be together,” Boomer says sadly. “All of us. We should never have come here.”  
  
Kara squeezes her hand. “First you have to release the prisoners. There has to be real negotiation.”  
  
Caprica looks to Leoben. “Cavil will resist it. We have superior fire power. He will never cede control to the humans.”  
  
“Well make him,” Kara snaps.  
  
“We vote,” Boomer says.  
  
Laura starts to laugh, almost hysterically. “Vote, then,” she says. “We’ll be waiting.”  
  
*  
  
They go together, Caprica and Boomer and Kara and Leoben. Kara stiffens when they reach the others, as Simon studies her slowly. Leoben takes hold of her wrist again, squeezes until she turns to him with a nod and pulls away. He sees Cavil watching.  
  
“We did this wrong,” Boomer starts.  
  
“We wanted to create somewhere that we could all live in God’s love,” Caprica continues.  
  
“God this, God that,” Cavil retorts. “You wanted a petting zoo for your favorite humans and we built you one. No use complaining now.”  
  
“We’re hardly--” Gaius interrupts from a corner, but Doral cuts him off.  
  
“There’s no need for us to surrender.”  
  
“We will curb the remaining resistance in due time,” Simon adds.  
  
Leoben laces his fingers through Kara’s, her palm warm against his. “D’Anna?” he asks softly.  
  
She shakes her head at him, so sadly. “The three of you,” she says derisively. “So in love.” She spits the word like an epithet.  
  
For a moment he sees everything, as clearly as in the moment between death and life, but it’s all so quick he can’t understand: Cavil, talking to people he doesn’t recognize but should; Kara gripping his hand above a tub; a bright mural of stars; a resurrection hub exploding in a cloud of shrapnel; Kara screaming out as he surges into her body; children, playing in grass greener than anything on this planet.  
  
The flow of words around him is briefly incomprehensible. The only thing that anchors Leoben to his own life is Kara, squeezing his hand.


	4. Chapter 4

“What?” Kara snaps incredulously as Leoben pulls her with him into the hall. “Where are we going?”  
  
“They outvoted us,” Boomer says, dispirited.  
  
“You’re kidding.” Kara gets in front of her. “Seriously? That wasn’t even a vote! There are millions of Cylons--”  
  
“That’s not how it works,” Caprica cuts her off, her voice crisp and clear. “We vote by model. Every two votes with the twos,” she nods to Leoben. “Every six with me.”  
  
Kara shakes her head. “But you’re different.” She narrows her eyes at Leoben. “Aren’t you?”  
  
All three of them stare at each other uncertainly.  
  
“God has shaped our lives,” Leoben says finally. “My experiences have differed from my brothers’. But they are still my brothers.”  
  
Caprica nods in gratitude for the explanation.  
  
Kara’s eyes flare at the strangeness of it, and she starts to move, heading away from the meeting chamber. Leoben takes her arm gently after a few yards, steers her into a smaller room.  
  
“So what are we going to do?” Kara asks once the door is closed.  
  
“Back on Caprica,” Caprica says.“We had to convince them. We had to earn their belief.”  
  
“And how did you do it then?” Kara demands.  
  
Boomer shakes her head. "They never believed what we believed.” She glares at Caprica as the other woman opens her mouth. “Their reaction in there? They’re happy with things like they are. They never wanted peace.”  
  
Caprica looks sad for a moment, almost scared.  
  
“It’ll be alright,” Leoben says, with such sureness that all three women turn to him.  
  
“What are we going to do?" Caprica asks.  
  
Kara grins. "This." She lays out the plan: the twos, sixes and eights will help free Tigh and Laura and the rest of the prisoners. Then together they'll take control of the Fleet vessels on the ground and break through the jamming to contact Galactica. Boomer and Caprica nod as she talks it out. Leoben just watches, eyes glowing.  
  
"But before that, once our people are free, you destroy the resurrection ships," Kara finishes, watching them closely. As shock crosses Caprica's face, she plunges on. "My people out there are right about one thing--if your enemy will come back every time, there's no point fighting. Cavil and the others--they'll never be willing to live in peace with us. They're either dead or attacking. I'd rather they be dead."  
  
Caprica is watching Leoben desperately. "They're still our brothers and sisters," she says. "Changing the Plan is one thing, but exterminating them? Is this what you've seen? Is this what God wants from us?"  
  
Kara watches his face as he blinks, glances at her. "I've seen peace," he finally says. "And that Kara will lead us." He looks at her again, nodding in faith.  
  
Caprica sighs. "Alright," she whispers.  
  
Kara raises an eyebrow. "Rook?"  
  
Boomer grins, a hint of her former self returning. "Time to kick some Cylon ass, sir."  
  
Leoben surveys them, nods. "We should wait until nightfall to begin releasing the prisoners. Caprica and Boomer, notify the others to be ready." The two Cylon women accept the instruction and head toward the door. Caprica's face is still creased with anxiety.  
  
“Caprica?” Kara spits out angrily.  
  
The blond woman stops, meeting her eyes hesitantly. “I didn’t choose it. The others...they think I’m different because I helped with the attacks.”  
  
Kara stares at her, rage building in her chest. But she recognizes the woman’s expression: she’s consumed by guilt, by doing penance. It’s something she knows well. With a final glare, she turns back to Leoben. "And us?"  
  
He steps closer to her. "Cavil and the others know your face now. You can't move until night, either."  
  
"And until then?"  
  
His fingers wrap around her side, pressing lightly over her bandages. Kara winces. "You need to rest. So you'll be ready."  
  
With a snort, she assents.  
  
Leoben slips behind her, rests his hands on her shoulders and slides them slowly downward, tugging Kara's wrists behind her back once more. Kara feels every inch of the caress, remembers his arms around her, before Sam died, before all of this. "This way," Leoben murmurs, and pushes her toward the hall.  
  
*  
  
Caprica and Boomer stand before the console, staring down into the gel that will let them speak to all their other sisters. Boomer reaches out, but Caprica snatches at her wrist. “Are you sure?”  
  
Boomer pulls away, fire in her eyes for the first time in months. “Tyrol died so we could have peace. I owe him this.”  
  
Caprica’s lips thin as she presses them together.  
  
Her sister squeezes her arm for a moment. “We’ll get Gaius out.”  
  
“And the others? All of them, out on the resurrection ships...they’ll be dead. Forever.”  
  
Boomer stares down into the console. “When I was human,” she says softly, “when I thought I was human, I tried to kill myself once.” She meets Caprica’s eyes. “Scripture tells us we’ll travel beyond the veil, closer to God, closer to eternal love. Don’t you want to be transformed like that?” Her voice is earnest.  
  
Caprica’s face creases in worry. “Sharon,” she begins, but Boomer has sunk her hand into the ooze, is beyond reach. Caprica eases her own hand in as well, opens her heart to her sisters, lets them feel her love, lets them know what they’ll be dying for.  
  
*  
  
While Kara sleeps, Leoben wanders their apartment, running his fingers over the picture frames, the couch cushions. This will never be their home now, at least not until the war is over.  
  
She begins to toss and turn behind him and he settles himself on the couch, rests his head in his hands, and reaches out. The content of her dream makes him ache: her mother is chasing her, furious. In his visions Socrata is a tool, but to Kara she’s a monster. In this dream Kara is an adult, but still terrified. Leoben reaches out to her, snatches her hand and pulls Kara through a secret passage, into the apartment with him, holds her close. She's suddenly a child in his arms, her hair raggedy and her cheeks streaked with tears. Leoben rubs her back as she clings to him, small scarred hands clutching his chest. Slowly she fades away.  
  
He opens his eyes. Across the apartment Kara is sitting up in bed, staring at him.  
  
Leoben looks out the window at the setting sun. "It's time," he says.  
  
*  
  
Sixes and eights and twos move purposefully through the halls, unlocking doors and freeing prisoners. Threes and fours and fives are scattered in corners where they’ve been dragged, their necks snapped silently from behind. Kara nods approval as Boomer directs them, commanding the movements of her troops. She falls in; this is the mission she’s been waiting for for months.  
  
Kara’s unprepared for it when it happens: she glances up and down the hall and turns a key in a lock, and there is Saul Tigh. His face is streaked with blood, his nose badly broken. As she enters he twists, eyes flaring wide as he shifts his weight and grimaces in pain. "It's alright," she gasps, crouching, holding out her hands. "It's Starbuck." With a nod, she shifts, becomes Starbuck, becomes hard enough not to react. "Can you walk?"  
  
Tigh's vision blinks clear. "You shouldn't have come. If they catch you--"  
  
"It's alright," she repeats. "Some of them are on our side. Come with me." She slides an arm around his waist, levers Tigh up off the floor, tries not to think about how easily she can support his weight.  
  
"Starbuck!" Tigh protests. Her eyes snap to the doorway.  
  
Leoben is standing there, hands raised, non-threatening.  
  
She squeezes Tigh's arm. "He's helping us," she says.  
  
Tigh begins to pull away, to struggle, to protest louder and louder despite Kara's heated shushings.  
  
"Colonel," Roslin suddenly snaps from beyond Leoben. "Get your ass in gear." She moves onward, supporting a former member of the quorum.  
  
As Kara helps Tigh ease his way from the room, giving Leoben a wide berth, she sees his bloodied and blackened fingertips , the dried rivulets of blood staining Tigh’s clothes. She grits her teeth and pushes onward.  
  
  
Once Tigh's been passed on to Doc Cottle's care, she and Leoben turn back toward the prison again. Kara's wounds are aching but she needs to see for herself that all the humans are free. They creep through the darkness, staying out of sight of any watching Centurions as best they can.  
  
Kara stops suddenly in the middle of the no-man's-land, remembering.  
  
"What is it?" Leoben asks softly.  
  
It's still vivid in her mind: the way his body thrashed as he was held underwater, the way he groaned as she hit him, over and over. "I'm sorry," she gasps.  
  
Leoben frowns. "Kara?"  
  
"I'm sorry I tortured you."  
  
He smiles in the moonlight, leans close enough to whisper in her ear. "Don't forget--I let you."  
  
Kara rests her forehead against his shoulder. "Still..."  
  
Leoben presses his lips to her temple. "I love you, Kara."  
  
She pulls away and walks on.  
  
*  
  
The night passes, and he watches from the banks, an observer. Kara and the others scurry about, releasing more prisoners and slipping them out of the facility. Destiny guides Kara’s hand, invisible to her but not to him.  
  
Once they're all free and gathered in an abandoned basement, Kara pulls Roslin and Tigh aside. Tigh's eyes are still flashing with violence every time he glances at Leoben. Kara hisses and rants about war and alliance and annihilation until she finally seems to gain a grumbling assent from the others.  
  
He watches the other ripples in the stream, too, feels from a great distance how his brothers are dying, how the resurrection ships are winking out of existence one by one across the galaxy. As each flickers out, the sudden vanishing of one star in the sky, the twisting future closes in, becoming suddenly finite. Fear rises in Leoben briefly: he will have only one life to spend for her, now.  
  
Kara stalks toward him and passes him, heading toward the door. "Come on," she tosses off with a grunt. He follows.  
  
As they walk the dark streets, spotlights suddenly begin to move over the city: the absence of the prisoners has been noticed.  
  
"They have no attention for us right now," Leoben murmurs. "Not while our people are attacking elsewhere."  
  
Kara pauses to scan the area, checking that no one else is on the street. Then she tilts her head, moves away from the settlement.  
  
They stop a ways away. The night air is cool and crisp; there's a light scent of fall, of decay. Kara turns with her hands on her hips.  
"Tell me this is the right thing to do."  
  
He pauses. "It is what you were born to do."  
  
Her face hardens. "People are going to die," Kara murmurs, staring back toward the camp. "More people."  
  
Leoben nods. "My people are already dying."  
  
Kara bites her lip.  
  
"There is no other way," he adds. "Wars must be fought until they end."  
  
"Yeah," she says. "Yeah."  
  
Leoben reaches out then, resting his hands on either side of her face, thumbs stroking as Kara smiles hesitantly at him. Her eyes drop to his lips for just a moment, darkening, and it's the only signal he needs. He kisses her, strong and sure. Kara presses close, her mouth opening under his. He can feel whole ships dying as quickly as falling stars and he needs to be alive, needs this woman like he's never needed anything before.  
  
Kara is eager in his arms, pulling off his clothing as quickly as the buckles and zippers will allow. Leoben can barely restrain himself enough to be careful of Kara's injuries from the bombing. Their mouths and hands are ravenous, obliterating the distinction between human and Cylon.  
  
Finally they're naked, Leoben hovering over Kara, his fingers stroking roughly inside of her as she whimpers, clutching at his arms. "Please," Kara gasps. "Gods, Leoben--"  
  
And then he is inside her, and the stream sings through him all at once and he cannot watch, cannot keep any distance at all. As he moves, as she moves with him, Leoben can feel his soul twining with Kara’s, caught up in a current, hurtling toward pleasure, and life, and death.  
  
*  
  
Spotlights play over the tents as a lone figure strides through the camp, opening tent flaps and peering inside. D’Anna seethes with annoyance. She should never have listened to the crone, but time is running out now, she can feel it. She can’t wait for another vision.  
  
*  
  
Kara wakes, cold, and presses closer against the warm body beside her. Leoben is sitting up, his arms wrapped around his knees, staring broodingly up at the sky. She sits up behind him, wraps her arms around his waist. His body is radiating heat.  
  
"It's not very efficient of you, you know," she muses. "If you really wanted to improve on human physiology you wouldn't waste energy heating the whole night like this."  
  
Leoben sighs, his back shifting against Kara's breasts. "They’re almost gone. My brothers are fighting to destroy the last resurrection ships even now."  
  
Kara withdraws, staying silent, and Leoben twists to see her. "You'll be just a man," she says, her voice trembling faintly. Kara reaches for her shirt. Leoben catches her wrist.  
  
"Not just," he says firmly. "I stand beside the stream, Kara. I know the face of God."  
  
"The Gods," she corrects stubbornly, but without real force.  
  
"Does it matter?"  
  
She glares. Moonlight reflects off the planes of her face.  
  
"Aren't you going to ask what God looks like, Kara?" Leoben asks, his eyes teasing.  
  
Kara frowns.  
  
Leoben tilts her chin up with one hand, leans close enough that she can feel his breath on her lips."God is love," he murmurs.  
  
She snorts faintly, then looks away. When Kara speaks her voice is weak. "You're going to die." She is a woman who has burned or buried two men already, who has lost a third to the darkness of space. She wraps her arms around herself.  
  
Leoben nods slowly. "I have a lot left to do first. So do you." He reaches out and strokes her hair, watches as Kara's face contorts, as she gives in to comfort, for just a moment.  
  
Her eyes flare open, she stares straight into him. Leoben's breath catches in his chest: she isn't saying the words, but she means it. Kara leans forward and kisses him, softly, slowly. Leoben wraps her close in his arms. They stay like that, curled together, a long time.  
  
*  
  
Someone begins to scream.


	5. Chapter 5

One voice screams out, then another. A baby is crying.  
  
  
Kara and Leoben scramble into their clothes; she cocks her gun as she runs. The screams are coming from a tent near the edge of the encampment, and they arrive just as other members of the resistance are running up. Kara waves them back, flips open the tent’s entrance.  
  
It’s too dark to make out much of the scene inside: a woman is silhouetted, holding the crying child. The screamers have been silenced.  
  
A shot cracks through the air and the woman falls.  
  
Kara turns in shock, her ears ringing.  
  
“I had to,” Leoben says, pushing past her.  
  
Candles and flashlights suddenly illuminate the space as the resistance members and neighbors peer into the tent. On the ground lie the broken bodies of Tory and the teacher’s aide from the school. Kara takes them in with a glance, focused on the rest of the scene: Leoben is easing a baby away from the third body. D’Anna.  
  
In a fraction of a second Kara resumes command, barking out orders to the resistance fighters to clear out the civilians, get rid of the Cylon body, wrap the other two women in sheets until morning. While they get to work Leoben stands in the center of the tent, rocking the toddler in his arms as her small hands cling to his still-unbuttoned shirt.  
  
“What happened here?” Kara demands in an undertone, approaching him.  
  
Leoben stares down at the baby. “I shot D’Anna,” he answers flatly.  
  
Kara blinks in surprise, then lays her hand over his a moment.  
  
He looks up at her, nods once in acceptance. “She wanted the child.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“She’s our future.”  
  
Kara spares a glance for the baby. It’s big enough to be walking, to be quiet now as it’s held. Her stomach turns. “The cylons want human children now, too?”  
  
Leoben shakes his head, his eyes taking on the otherworldly sureness he has when he talks about her. “She’s the hybrid child. The daughter of an eight and a human.”  
  
“Helo and Sharon?” She frowns. “Their baby died, Leoben. Back on Galactica.”  
  
He smiles down at the baby. “She didn’t, Kara. She’s right here. I can see her place in the stream, her past.” For a moment his eyes seem to glow in the candlelight. “She has a bright future.”  
  
From outside the tent, voices ring out. Laura Roslin pushes her way inside and Kara leaps toward her, reaching out her arms.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Laura,” she says, wrapping her arms around the former president, turning her away from the bodies laid out in their shrouds.  
  
“The child,” Roslin begs, twisting to see past Kara.  
  
“She’s alright,” Leoben says, his voice and expression suddenly hard.  
  
Kara grips the other woman’s arms tightly, her eyes darkening, too. “She’s Helo’s daughter,” Kara says harshly, watching as Laura flinches.  
  
Roslin stares at Maya’s hair spilling out from under a sheet, her face twisted with guilt. She looks frantically at Kara, her voice stern but trembling. “We had to protect her. You can’t let them--”  
  
“From who?” Kara cuts her off, eyes wide and horrified. “That’s Helo’s baby.” She swallows hard, remembering his grief over Hera’s death. Remembering Sharon’s.  
  
“We had to,” Roslin says, her voice growing cold as she pulls away from Kara’s grasp. “She shot Bill. We had no way of knowing what would happen if we allowed her to raise this child.”  
  
Kara looks toward the baby uncertainly, then snaps to alertness as gunfire sounds in the distance. “They’re coming,” she snaps. “Get back to Tigh and the others.” Before Roslin can protest, she snatches Hera from Leoben and ducks out of the tent, slipping away into the night.  
  
*  
  
As the sky lightens Kara kneels by the stream where she once planned to build a house. With cloth torn from her jacket she wipes splattered blood from Hera’s face. Leoben watches from a few feet away, feeling the eddies carrying him along. They will change the worlds somehow, these two.  
  
“Do you think she’ll ever forget what happened?” Kara asks softly, looking toward him. Hera looks at him too, her gaze solemn.  
  
He smiles, lowering himself beside them. “Our lives are shaped by many forces, but--”  
  
“Gods, shut up,” Kara snaps, pulling the little girl into her lap. “When you see things like that when you’re little...”  
  
He reaches out to squeeze her shoulder. He sees it for an instant: the five-year-old’s tears as she’s beaten for her father’s failings, the eight-year-old’s hand being slammed in a door.  
  
“Leoben?” Kara’s voice is concerned and he lets go, realizing his grip has gotten far too tight.  
  
“We’ll keep her safe,” he promises fervently.  
  
Kara nods, resting her forehead against the child’s curls. “Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer,” she murmurs. “Keep Hera safe from harm and in your care.” She pulls back and Hera smiles. Kara hugs her tightly.  
  
“Will more of the D’Annas come for her?” she asks softly, not letting her tone betray her worry.  
  
Leoben frowns. “It’s possible.”  
  
She looks at him sharply. “Do you know or don’t you?”  
  
He shifts uncomfortably. “What I see isn’t always clear, Kara. God shows me glimpses of my own path and yours, but others only as they intersect--”  
  
“Whatever,” Kara mutters, smiling quickly at Hera. “She’ll have to stay with us then.” She looks troubled by the thought, but nods firmly. Glancing sideways at him she adds quietly, “Her parents...were some of my best friends. Are...”  
  
He nods. For a while they sit in silence as the sky shifts from pink and purple to pale blue. The baby sleeps in Kara’s arms. Eventually Leoben senses the stirring of tension, of wakefulness, from the settlement. “We should return,” he says softly. “They look to you for leadership.”  
  
“Yeah.” Kara sighs, then stands, lifting Hera in her arms and cradling the child’s weight against her hip. Leoben tries to suppress his smile at the sight of her with the child, at the realization that he’s living another moment he’s long remembered.  
  
Kara rolls her eyes at him and leads the way back toward the camp.  
  
*  
  
The tents are quiet as they approach--it’s still early, only an hour past sunrise, but the silence seems absolute. They’re halfway to the meeting place when Kara realizes: it’s the absence of Centurion footsteps that she’s hearing. She glances around sharply, covering Hera’s head with her hand as if it’s enough protection.  
  
“They’re occupied,” Leoben says softly, as though reading her thoughts. “They’re regrouping. We’ll need to act quickly.”  
  
She looks around and ducks sideways into a tent. Inside Duck reaches for his weapon, then relaxes at the sight of her and tilts his head toward the basement. Kara and Leoben descend.  
  
They’re halfway down the stairs when the shouting reaches them.  
  
“I don’t care what the frak you think you saw, lady, my wife is not a traitor!” Tigh yells over the tumult.  
  
Kara squeezes through the last door and into the chamber, Hera’s arms tight around her neck at the sounds of chaos. She takes in the room in one glance: Boomer and Caprica and a half dozen other sixes and eights--she doesn’t pause to wonder how she knows which are which--are arrayed opposite Tigh and Ellen and Laura, whose eyes leap to the child in Kara’s arms as they enter.  
  
“She’s feeding information to the Cavil!” Caprica protests. “I saw her with my own eyes.”  
  
“Frakking machine!”  
  
“Enough!” Kara cuts them off. “What’s going on?” She directs her words to Caprica, knowing Tigh will have something to say about that later.  
  
“She thinks she saw my Ellen helping--”  
  
“That woman, his wife.” Caprica says firmly. “She was in our facility. She was having,” she glances at the Tighs, “sex. With Cavil.”  
  
Kara grimaces.  
  
“Ellen is a lot of things but she is not disloyal!” Tigh growls.  
  
Kara nods slowly, rubbing Hera’s back as the child clings to her. Then she turns to Ellen, remembering how distraught she’s been since Tigh went missing. Her stomach sinks. She waits.  
  
“I only wanted--” Ellen begins tearfully.  
  
Tigh roars a wordless protest and whirls away.  
  
“I did it to keep you safe!” Ellen cries. “I love you so much, Saul! He told me they’d torture you, kill you if I didn’t!” Her husband has his back to her, and she moves closer. “I’m sorry,” she whimpers.  
  
When Saul doesn’t answer, Ellen turns back to the group. “It’s alright, though. I can do it. It should be me.”  
  
“Do what?” Kara demands.  
  
“We were discussing,” Roslin says in measured tones, “who to send in to break through the jamming signals the Cylons have been sending. So we can contact Galactica.”  
  
Kara’s eyes flare. “It’s out there?”  
  
“Just can’t frakking hear us,” Tigh snaps.  
  
“I can get in,” Ellen says calmly. “Cavil--” she winces, and Kara turns her face away from the other woman’s shame. “He’ll believe me if I tell him I don’t want him to come after Saul. He leaves me alone in his office...afterwards. Goes about his business.”  
  
“Don’t,” Saul begs, turning back to them, his frailness and injury after the weeks of confinement suddenly readily apparent in the way he holds himself, the way his face crumbles.  
  
Ellen smiles at him, her gaze pained. “It’s alright, Saul. I’ll do it and then they’ll all see. All I want is to help.”  
  
“Alright,” Roslin says firmly. When Tigh opens his mouth to interrupt she shakes her head. “Somehow we have to let Galactica know we’re here and we’re ready for them. None of the rest of us will make it through the door.”  
  
Hera squirms in Kara’s arms, trying to reach out for Laura and Kara turns away. She stares down at the little girl, then glances toward Boomer who’s still watching them. She catches Leoben’s eye too and nods her head away from the group.  
  
They gather in a recessed corner of the room. Boomer bites her lip, her eyes eager.  
  
“Here,” Kara murmurs, holding the child out. Hera’s eyes go wide, but she lets Boomer hold her, lets her bury her face in her hair. “I need to ask--” Kara flinches. “Is her mother alive? Do you know?”  
  
Boomer nods. “Yes.”  
  
Leoben’s hand rests on the small of her back as Kara sighs in relief. She leans into his support.  
  
“Good,” she murmurs. Then she shifts gears. “I need to go out and talk to people. They’ll be waking up with Cylons in their midst and a lot of them aren’t going to like it. Can the two of you stay with Hera?”  
  
Boomer grins widely. “Of course.”  
  
Kara glances to Leoben and sees his assent. “Thanks.” She turns back to the group discussing the logistics of Ellen’s ploy, and gets to work.  
  
*  
  
Leoben and Boomer retreat into a recessed area at the back of the basement that has been set up as a sleeping area. Boomer settles Hera between them on a cot, stares down at the child in wonder as she rests her head on Boomer’s leg.  
  
Leoben watches the toddler close her eyes, then flutters them open in surprise as Boomer’s projection appears around them.  
  
“She can see it!” his sister says, elated.  
  
He nods. “She’s Sharon’s daughter.”  
  
Boomer looks up at him, nods once, then picks up a stuffed dog from the floor and hands it to Hera, who curls herself around it and falls asleep. “I was going to have Tyrol’s children,” she says softly.  
  
He watches her and senses for the first time the sharpness of the loss she must feel. Having Kara in his arms, the intimacy of it, the connection--for the first time Leoben knows what it is that destiny has promised him, and he can imagine Boomer’s grief. “I’m sorry,” he says.  
  
She glances at him sharply, noticing the change. “What is it?”  
  
He gazes down at the child. “Kara.”  
  
Boomer laughs for the first time in weeks. “You had sex.”  
  
Leoben shrugs. “That and--and we’ll be able to die.”  
  
She sighs. “I know.” Her voice is soft as she strokes Hera’s hair.  
  
“I shot D’Anna,” he says then, as awareness of it swirls through him. “And I can’t feel her in the stream.” His face is drawn in confusion.  
  
“You said Starbuck would lead us,” Boomer protests. “You were the one who said--”  
  
“I know.” Leoben fights to catch his breath.  
  
She reaches over the child, takes his hand. “We should pray for them.”  
  
He nods; his sister is right. And he knows at once that the Prayer to the Cloud of Unknowing came to him all those years ago for this reason.  
  
*  
  
The day passes quickly out among the people as Kara tours the camp, Roslin and Tigh and Caprica and Gaius alongside her, explaining what has happened, convincing them to trust the twos and sixes and eights who need safe passage.  
  
Another six brings word that the Centurions were successfully given free will during the escape, and while the news sends an icy chill through her, Kara is grateful for it when gunfire sounds from the Cylon headquarters and Caprica assures her the Centurions are taking care of Cavil and his followers.  
  
As afternoon fades into evening, Kara walks with Tigh toward the edge of the encampment, the last row of tents. She stops a moment, gazing out toward the graveyard beyond, aching with the realization that she hasn’t thought of Sam all day.  
  
“Starbuck?” Tigh asks gruffly.  
  
“Sam died,” she says quickly. The words still hurt.  
  
He looks down at her, his face creased in sympathy. “I’m sorry. He was a good man.”  
  
She nods once, pushes back the emotions. “It’s what you said, though,” Kara says, flinching, as she begins to move again. “I chose what I could survive. If I’d lost...” she shakes her head. “I loved Sam. But I’m still here.” After a few steps she realizes Tigh isn’t beside her anymore and turns sharply.  
  
The old man is standing frozen, tears in his eyes.  
  
“What is it?” Kara asks.  
  
“I could never live without her,” he says, his voice warbling. “I don’t know who I’d be without Ellen.”  
  
Kara takes a step closer, reaches out hesitantly and touches his shoulder. “She’s sure she can do this.”  
  
He stares off toward the Cylon complex. “She’s my wife.”  
  
Kara can only nod.  
  
Tigh turns back to her. “I’m going in.”  
  
“If you blow her cover--”  
  
“One of the skinjobs can take me prisoner,” he says, suddenly full of the command presence that used to fuel him. “I’m getting my wife.”  
  
There’s no changing his mind, she sees that. “Get Galactica while you’re at it,” she says firmly.  
  
With a hint of a smile and a salute, Tigh strides away across the sand.  
  
*  
  
Sometime after nightfall, back in their bunker, Kara rests her head on Leoben’s shoulder, her eyes daring anyone else in the room to make something of it. She’s too exhausted for the glare to have much force, but no one comments.  
  
Her ribs are aching from the long day touring the camp, and her eyes are beginning to fall closed when suddenly Duck leaps upright with a shout.  
  
“We’ve got them! We’ve got Galactica!” he shrieks, drawing all eyes.  
  
Kara’s on her feet in a flash, reads the words on the screen over his shoulder. A sob wells up inside of her. HAVE HOPE. WE’RE COMING FOR YOU. Leoben wraps an arm around her shoulders as relief overwhelms her. On her other side, Laura smiles at her through teary eyes and it feels like the nightmare is about to be over.  
  
Then footsteps clatter down the stairs and Jammer bursts into the room. “It just went up!” he pants. “All the Cylons--the bunker exploded!” He gasps for breath.  
  
Roslin’s face freezes and Kara closes her eyes.  
  
“Did the Tighs make it out?” the former president asks stiffly.  
  
Kara doesn’t look, but she hears the choked sound Laura makes as Jammer answers, and it’s enough. She turns, buries her face in Leoben’s shirt and holds on.  
  
*  
  
Leoben leads Kara away from the others, back toward Boomer and Hera. He lays down with her on a cot, lets her cry until she falls asleep.  
  
He feels the stream flood through him suddenly, as his very existence changes. It is slower now, narrower--the branching paths of destiny restricted to a single way forward. The last resurrection ship is gone.


	6. Chapter 6

A cloud of dust rises into the air as the Raptor lands, and everyone assembled stumbles back. Kara strokes Hera’s hair, hiding the child’s face against her shirt so she doesn’t breathe it in. For more than a month this is the thing Kara’s wanted most, but as the hatch opens and Adama peers out, she wants to run away.  
  
He steps onto the ground, his face contorting for a moment as he looks down at the sand beneath his feet. Then he raises his eyes, surveys the crowd. He sighs slightly in relief when he sees her, but Kara can’t bring herself to do more than nod. There are so many missing from their ranks.  
  
Laura starts moving toward him first, and the Admiral reaches out for her, pulls her into his arms. Kara manages a smile. Then Hera tugs at her hair and Kara looks down, smiling wider, bouncing the baby on her hip until she laughs.  
  
It’s not until she looks up again that she sees Sharon staring at them from the entrance of the Raptor. Raising her free hand, she waves the other woman closer, hugs Hera against her one second longer.  
  
Sharon stops a foot away, eyes wide. “Starbuck?”  
  
Kara nods. “We can get into where she’s been later, but this--this is your daughter.” Sharon starts to cry as she holds out her arms for the child, and Kara’s struck by how this woman is at once the same and completely different from Boomer. She eases Hera into  
Sharon’s arms, feeling the chill of the morning as the child’s warmth dissipates.  
  
“I thought you were gone,” Sharon croons. She looks at Kara tearfully. “You saved her. My little girl. Thank you.”  
  
Kara tries to smile, then waves half-heartedly at Hera as her mother carries her quickly back to the Raptor to call Galactica, to call Helo.  
  
An uproar grabs her attention. Adama has his weapon out, is shouting at the sight of Leoben and Caprica moving toward the crowd.  
  
Kara doesn’t hesitate before she’s rushing toward the pair.  
  
“Stop,” she gasps, throwing out her arms in front of the two Cylons as Adama cocks his gun. Kara looks wildly to Roslin, her heart racing as she braces for betrayal.  
  
“Kara?” Adama lowers his weapon, caught between anger and joy that she’s alive.  
  
“They’re on our side,” she says quickly. “I can explain.”  
  
“It’s alright, Bill,” Laura adds. “Kara’s right. They’re on our side now. They freed us.”  
  
His eyes darken. “You can’t just trust these things,” he growls, looking back and forth between the two of them.  
  
“You trust Sharon,” Kara presses back. “You believe that she would never hurt you. It’s hard, I know it is, but even if you don’t trust these people yet, we’re on the same side of the war now. Without them we’d never have been able to call you back.”  
  
*  
  
The next hours are filled with grueling debate; Adama resists a treaty even as Kara argues that there’s no other way. Leoben watches from a distance, taking in the push and pull of power. Caprica is at the edge of the group of leaders, standing with Gaius. They lean on each other, exchanging small touches of support and comfort as the argument wears on, and Leoben smiles in approval: somewhere in the chaos of the last two days they’ve both overcome their guilt. Another Six is part of the group, too, advocating for the treaty, for peace. Caprica’s love is emanating through all of them.  
  
Leoben’s smile fades when he looks to Kara. She’s been worn so thin by loss and pain; Adama’s opposition has her on the verge of breaking. Finally she heads away from the group, toward him, relief lightening her eyes.  
  
“It’s agreed,” she says softly. “There’s a lot left to be worked out, but we’re at peace.”  
  
He laughs, then. He can see all of it for just a moment: the harmony of the worlds, peace spreading out around them through the stars. He’s never loved her so much.  
  
*  
  
They wander through the camp, away from the chaos, and the fear in Kara’s chest eases for the first time in months. Sam is gone, and Tigh, and Tyrol, but Galactica has survived. It’s something.  
  
Leoben’s hand slips into hers as they walk, and she holds on tightly. This is something, too.  
  
A mix of humans and Cylons are already at work on the rubble of the Cylon detention facility; the explosion happened elsewhere, so the cells need only be cleaned and stripped of their heavy iron doors before they can be used as living quarters. Winter will be coming soon, and the Colonials have learned to be practical. Kara smiles at the sight of them. An industrious few are carrying brushes and buckets of paint. She grabs one, smiling at Leoben, and leads him inside.  
  
Their apartment is blackened with soot, the window a gaping hole. But it’s still there.  
  
Kara opens the paint, peers inside. “You like white?” She looks up and finds Leoben staring at her intensely. “What?”  
  
He nods once. “Sure.”  
  
“You don’t want blue?” she mutters, “something streamier?” She can feel him watching her and shivers, then dips her brush and starts in on the closest wall. The concrete soaks up the paint quickly, becoming a bright canvas, a fresh start. Kara smiles at the sight. Back on Caprica she filled an apartment with paintings full of anger and loss and regret. The white is clean and new, everything they need.  
  
Beside her Leoben begins to work as well, his strokes overlapping hers. With a quick glance out of the corner of her eye, Kara paints a bright streak of white down the side of his face.  
  
Leoben startles, laughing, reaches toward her.  
  
Kara darts away with a shriek, but he catches her, his hands dripping white as he pins her wrists to the wall. The mood changes in an instant as Kara rocks against him. Leoben leans in, claims her lips with such intensity that all thought is driven from her mind. His tongue thrusts into her mouth, his body flush against hers as his cock hardens against her stomach. Kara tugs her hands free so she can clutch him closer.  
  
Leoben’s hands slide under her clothes, pulling roughly at buttons and seams. White paint slicks her skin as his calloused fingers caress her breasts, slide down to her ass to urge her to move.  
  
They fall together to the floor as Kara tugs open his pants, needing him inside of her, needing this connection. She’s alive and she finally gets to have a future. Her back arches as Leoben sucks hard at her nipple and she kicks the can of paint over. Kara twists to see, but Leoben swallows her laughter in a kiss. He holds her down, something burning in his eyes that goes beyond this moment.  
Kara lets him take control, loses herself to his touch. One of his hands is tangled in her hair, angling her mouth to meet his as his other aligns their bodies, and then he’s inside her and she’s flying, pleasure overwhelming her as Leoben drives into her over and over.  
  
Kara sees stars as orgasm rushes through her, and for just a moment she thinks she glimpses the swirl of colors that have always haunted her dreams.  
  
  
They lie together for awhile, catching their breath. Leoben’s arm is draped across Kara as he watches the paint on her skin slowly drying, leaving her looking smooth and white as marble.  
  
“This is weird, you know,” Kara says mildly after a while, turning her head to look toward the bedroom. “You made me my apartment?”  
  
Leoben traces a finger through the paint on her arm. “Cylons experience the world differently than humans. We just have to imagine our world in a certain way and it’s as if we’re there.”  
  
“Like the old-fashioned v-world sims?” Kara asks, confused.  
  
He shakes his head. “You carry it with you, the place you want to be. Caprica likes a lake she used to live near, or the woods. Boomer...before Tyrol died, she built a projection of a house, a place she wanted to live with him. A home.” He sees Kara flinch in sympathy, runs his fingers over her hip. “I thought you’d want yours.”  
  
She stares up at him, her face open for just a moment, bewildered, amazed. Then she blinks hard, clearing her expression. “Show me.”  
  
He frowns.  
  
“Well?” Kara prods, impatient.  
  
Leoben takes a deep breath, tightens his grip on her, and summons the projection up around them, building it with his mind like he always has: dim afternoon light from the windows, the soft reds and browns of Kara’s furniture. And paintings, everywhere. He looks down at Kara and she’s staring up at the wall above them, something like horror in her eyes.  
  
“Did you put that there?” she gasps, sitting straight upright, one hand over her mouth as she takes in the riotous swirl of red and blue and yellow.  
  
He sits up beside her. “This is borrowed from a memory of Boomer’s. I didn’t paint that symbol, Kara. You did.”  
  
She squeezes her eyes closed. “Make it go away.”  
  
The projection unravels. He strokes her hair. “There.”  
  
Kara nods, bursts into motion, down the hall and into the bathroom, scrubbing the paint off her skin with the towels he set out when he first brought her here, just a few days ago. He hears her enter the bedroom, search through the wardrobe of Boomer’s spare clothes. He waits for her to come back.  
  
At last she does, standing over him with her hands on her hips, surveying the apartment with its freshly painted wall. “It’s alright,” she says shortly. “Once we finish painting, it’ll look okay.”  
  
Leoben looks from her to the wall, sees the mandala there bleeding through from vision into reality. His mind opens and he sees the mandala, pulsing with meaning, a sign of things to come. Kara will be radiant as she follows it to Earth. Her journey is far from over.  
  
“What is it?” Kara demands.  
  
He clears his face, trying not to seem distressed.  
  
“We’ll have a lot of neighbors,” she’s saying now. “These buildings will be prime real estate until we can get more built.”  
  
Leoben stares at her, chest aching. He’s about to take this away from her, that’s his role. Even if he wants it too. “No,” he tells her.  
  
She stops talking, suddenly tense. “What?”  
  
Leoben rises, reaches for his discarded clothes and begins to wipe at the paint marking his own skin. “You have to find Earth, Kara. You have a destiny.”  
  
Her eyes go wide as if he’s betrayed her. “We made peace here, Leoben. We did what--I did what you said I was supposed to do!”  
  
“You’ve seen it,” he pushes her. “You found Earth on Kobol. It’s still out there.”  
  
“Frak Earth!” Kara protests. “And destiny. We’re here. That’s good enough.”  
  
He closes his eyes against her pain. But he is God’s tool, and he knows there is only one true path. “There’s a reason you’ve suffered, Kara. A reason you had to be prepared, a reason you survived all these years. Some things are already written, and nothing we can do can erase them. You have a higher purpose. And mine is to guide you.”  
  
She shakes her head. “I don’t believe in destiny.”  
  
Leoben smiles knowingly at her. He’s seen her, praying in the back of a closet in her childhood room, dedicating her life to the Gods. “Of course you do. You believe, as I believe, that there is a divine plan for us--and it’s better, isn’t it, believing that all of your pain, all the death we have witnessed and caused is for some purpose?”  
  
“If there is a plan, it’s not about me.” She’s in his space now, her body humming with anger. The mandala is swirling around her, around him too, the closer she gets. “All of this has happened before,” Kara recites. “And all of it will happen again. With or without me.”  
  
Now he grabs her by the shoulders, even as she tries to pull away, fights to keep his voice steady, to make her listen to reason. “There were cycles before, Kara. You kill us, we get reborn. We kill you, your species propagates. What is genocide when nothing ever ends? That’s gone now. There aren’t enough of either of us left for another battle. I have seen how this ends, Kara, I’ve seen your glory. There’s only one path to that moment. God has been showing you for years - you painted that symbol! You’ve seen him at work in your life. We have no choice but to obey.”  
  
Kara pulls back again and this time he lets her go. “There’s always a choice.” She takes the steps two at a time, slams the door behind her.  
  
It locks him in.  
  
*  
  
Kara heads for the building’s entrance as fast as she can, fuming. She should have known better. This is not all that we are. Their first conversation, their first fight. This is all she wants to be. It’s fine, she doesn’t care, she promises herself. He’s a man, just a man. Another one she’ll kill or lose or drive away.  
  
She strides out into the harsh light of day. Humans are milling around, a few dragging broken Centurions from the rubble. Kara takes off before they can call out to her, sprints through the no-man’s-land and past the camp, just running.  
  
A dozen yards from the forlorn little playground at the edge of the settlement, Kara slows, panting and grinning.  
  
It takes Helo a moment to look up and see her; then he covers the remaining distance, swings her off of her feet into a hug. Kara laughs, holding on, trying not to sob: one more person returned to her in spite of the Gods and the worlds and the vacuum in between.  
  
After a long minute, he sets her down, turns back to check that Hera hasn’t disappeared again. She’s still digging in the make-shift sandbox. Helo smiles, then turns back to Kara and reaches out, rubs her head.  
  
“Helo?” She flinches away from him.  
  
“You have paint in your hair.”  
  
“Yeah...” She’s flushing, she knows it.  
  
“Starbuck? Something you’d like to tell the class?” Helo smiles his damned knowing smile.  
  
Kara rolls her eyes and shrugs. And he laughs, and everything else fades away. “You’ve got a pretty awesome kid,” she says softly, watching Hera play.  
  
“Yeah.” His voice nearly breaks with joy, with love.  
  
She swallows hard. “You really loved Sharon?”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. I love her.”  
  
Kara looks at Hera, avoids his eyes. “I slept with Leoben.”  
  
He doesn’t answer, but when she glances over he’s studying her carefully.  
  
“Helo?” she asks again, and bites her lip.  
  
“He made you nuts, Kara. Got inside your head.”  
  
“You weren’t there.”  
  
“I’ve heard stories.”  
  
“He just--fra--friend!” She glares when Helo laughs. “Like you want me cursing in front of your kid?” Kara sighs. “I hurt him and he made me crazy but he’s here. Even though he knows who I am.”  
  
Helo cocks his head. “Are you mad at us for leaving?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You can be.”  
  
She puts her hands on her hips. “It was the right tactical decision. I would have made it, too.”  
  
“But Leoben was here.”  
  
She shrugs. “And we wouldn’t be at peace now without him.”  
  
Helo raises an eyebrow. “I heard this was all you.”  
  
“From who?”  
  
“Roslin.”  
  
Kara grimaces at the name. “You know about her and Hera?”  
  
He clenches his jaw, watches his daughter. “Not right now,” he says, anger prickling his voice.  
  
She nods. Hera looks up at them, squealing as she throws a rock into the air. They watch her in companionable silence. Kara  
rests her head against Helo’s shoulder. After a few minutes she speaks softly. “Do you believe in destiny?”  
  
He answers slowly. “I don’t know. Not for me, but--maybe for her. Someone’s looking after her. And she’s the first child to be born to a human and Cylon family...she’s important.”  
  
“She’s just a kid,” Kara snaps.  
  
He puts his arm around her. “And we’ll let her be.”  
  
“Captain.” A voice interrupts and they turn as one. “Captain!” Kat bursts out, lighting up.  
  
Kara nods to her, smiling but caught off guard at the sight of someone in a flight suit after all this time.  
  
Kat quickly reports to Helo: their initial ground survey shows all the launch keys were destroyed along with the main Cylon encampment. He nods in acknowledgment, dismissing Kat, and collects his daughter, balancing her on his hip. “Come on,” he tells Kara, and strides off toward the Cylon structure where the rest of the Colonial officers are visible even from a distance, directing the civilians.  
  
He fills Kara in on the situation on the Galactica while they walk--and then suddenly she’s not listening anymore because there in front of them, after all this time, is Lee Adama. Kara launches herself toward him.  
  
Lee catches her as she slams into him, holds on reflexively for a moment and then lets go, stepping back stiffly, staring at her with a mix of discomfort and distaste and relief. “Hello, Kara.”  
  
Kara flinches, feeling the rejection like a slap. She forces back a wave of regret she’d forgotten she was supposed to feel. “Hey, Lee.”  
  
He stares at her, his face wavering between emotions. “I’m,” he swallows. “I heard about Sam. I’m sorry.”  
  
She drops her eyes. “Yeah. Thanks.” Peeking back up at him she sees the genuine sympathy in Lee’s face and wants to cry. Leoben should stay the frak away from her.  
  
Stepping in to cover the awkwardness, Helo begins to report. He shakes his head dolefully as he explains that it’ll be a long time before they can get the grounded ships in the air again. The argument that Roslin and Adama and the others have been having about staying or leaving has already been settled.  
  
Kara shrugs. “So we stay here,” she says defensively. “I know you two have been nice and warm up there in your battlestars, but this is our shot at a civilization. A home.”  
  
“Space was starting to get pretty cold,” Lee nods, his eyes searching hers for a moment before he glances back to Helo.  
  
The taller man shakes his head, affable as ever. “I met my daughter today.” He rests a hand on Hera’s head; she’s fallen asleep in his arms. “You and Dee don’t have kids but when you do--I want to give her everything, Lee. I want to give her better than this.” Helo waves his other hand at the dust and rubble. He looks down at Kara. “I remember when you came out of the Tomb of Athena. You were still whispering you were so in awe of it, of how beautiful it was. Earth. That’s where I want to raise my daughter.”  
  
Kara sighs softly, despairingly at the hope in his eyes. “I remember.” She avoids looking at Lee.  
  
A Raptor descending draws all their attention and wakes Hera, who starts to cry. Helo shushes her. “That’s Sharon,” he tells Kara. “Can you bring the baby to her?”  
  
She nods, reaches out and shifts the child into her arms. Already the warm weight is becoming familiar. Kara smiles tightly at the two men for a moment, then heads off.  
  
  
“What do you think?” Kara murmurs, bouncing Hera as she walks. Little fingers poke at her tattoo, then the girl looks up at her, eyes wide and honest. “Do you want to go to Earth?”  
  
Hera smiles widely and Kara stops short. She’s completely certain that she’s just gotten an answer. She tightens her arms, pulling Hera closer until the sleepy head rests on her shoulder. “Alright,” Kara murmurs, heading toward the Raptor landing pad, “I hope you’re right about this.”  
  
*  
  
Leoben leans out the window, taking a deep breath. The air carries an odor of burnt plastic and metal, but it’s faded since last night. The sunlight warms his face as he watches Kara down below. The stream is rushing onward now, carrying them both forward faster than he can get his bearings. He sees her give in to it: no longer the rock fighting back the current but the leaf above it.  
  
He turns back into the room. Eight forks, eight spoons. Six chairs, though two are damaged now. The rug bears the imprint of their presence in white paint: here he braced his hand on the floor, there Kara’s hair fell like a halo. For a moment he submerges himself in the sensation of her body, of her love; the memory is more intense than any vision. If he had a choice he wouldn’t leave, either.  
  
He crosses the room, ascends the stairs, wrenches open the door. For another moment he looks down at their home, then he leaves it behind.


	7. Chapter 7

Kara holds Hera close as they walk through the camp. Around her life is settling down again; the arrival of Galactica seems to have brought hope back. People wave to her and smile at the baby; two little boys chase a dog across her path, screaming and laughing. Kara takes a deep breath for the first time since she can remember.  
  
There don’t seem to be Cylons mixed in with the crowd, and it makes her wary, but she doesn’t let it darken her mood as she heads toward the meeting tent where she left Roslin, Adama and the Cylon leader Natalie earlier. That’s where Sharon should be.  
  
In the alley between the meeting tent and the make-shift hospital, Kara glimpses two dark heads bent together. She steps closer and shakes her head at the oddness of seeing Boomer and Sharon like this, one woman’s arm around the other’s shoulders.  
  
Both of them look up. Their cheeks are damp.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Kara asks quickly, squeezing Hera tightly enough that the child wakes up in her arms.  
  
Sharon straightens her uniform, blinks her tears away. “Boomer was telling me about Tyrol.”  
  
Kara looks away. “Yeah. We lost a lot of good people.”  
  
“I know.” Sharon stands then, reaches out eagerly to stroke Hera’s hair. Kara gladly releases the child, watching as her mother hugs her close.  
  
Boomer rises too, hesitantly, frowning as she looks at Kara. Then she grins. “You’re covered in paint, Kara,” she says slyly.  
  
Sharon looks up, peers at the white smudges left behind on Kara’s throat and arms. “What the hell have you been doing?”  
  
At this Boomer actually laughs, and it’s such a wonderful sound that Kara hardly glares at all when she answers Sharon: “Leoben.”  
  
Sharon blinks at Kara in surprise. “Really?”  
  
Kara sighs, thinking of their last conversation. “Yeah, but...”  
  
“But?” Boomer prompts.  
  
Kara scowls. “He wants me to be something I’m not.”  
  
Sharon cocks her head, looking down at her daughter. “Well,” she says slowly. “He was made to see what the rest of us can’t.”  
  
“Made.” Kara shakes her head at the strangeness.  
  
“And he’s always seen you.”  
  
Kara looks between them, unsure which of the women before her has spoken. The idea that they’ve been created like this is suddenly unsettling. Before she can speak, shouts ring out behind her and Kara whirls.  
  
“Frakking cylon!” someone yells. With a glance at Boomer, Kara heads for the voices.  
  
*  
  
He’s been walking slowly through the camp, feeling the dull throb of anger and fear all around him as he passes. It begins to beat faster just ahead, spiking suddenly as shouting erupts, women’s voices and men’s and his sister’s. Leoben breaks into a run.  
  
He reaches the scene, a mass of tangling people in a square just big enough for a brawl, and takes it in in a glance: a Six - Faith, she calls herself; they’ve all started naming themselves since Caprica - is shouting back and forth with a red-haired woman, while the crowd of humans around them taunts and jeers.  
  
Across the square he sees Caprica emerging, her eyes anxiously meeting his.  
  
“I watched her shoot half my team back on Caprica!” the red-haired woman is shouting. “Her and a hundred more just like her!”  
  
“You killed me!” Faith is screaming back. “Who are you to talk of mercy?!”  
  
Leoben shoves his way through to them, all elbows and knees until the humans recognize him and fall back. He steps between the two women, facing Faith, his hands raised in peace. “Don’t do this, sister,” he murmurs. “This will be a fight to the death and death now will be the end of everything.”  
  
She blinks at him, tears trembling in her eyes, and he wonders what the human woman did to her. But then Caprica has an arm around her, is guiding her away. Beyond them, Kara is in the crowd, her eyes lingering on him.  
  
Leoben turns back to the others.  
  
“Get the frak off our planet!” someone shouts, and the rest chime in.  
  
He feels the rush of their rage, their hatred, and then as if in response a shock wave shakes them all as a ship slams into the atmosphere. Leoben looks up, staring in awe as raiders and Vipers whirl through the sky, chasing each other in and out of the clouds. Raiders chasing raiders.  
  
He looks back toward Kara. She’s staring upward, rapt, torn between longing and fear. Then she turns, takes off toward the command tent.  
  
*  
  
Kara pushes her way through the crowd of people in the meeting tent and clambers onto the low stage. “What the hell is going on?” she demands as she reaches Roslin.  
  
The older woman turns to her, eyes alarmed. “Bill went back to the Galactica. The Cylons--” she glances warily toward Natalie.  
  
“Cavil’s forces jumped in with five baseships,” Natalie continues quickly. “They mean to wipe us out. We’re holding them off for now with baseships of our own.”  
  
“And the Galactica and the Pegasus,” Laura adds.  
  
Kara nods, glances upward at the canvas roof as another concussion booms through the atmosphere.  
  
People are flooding into the tent as the fighting above continues, shouting for information and passing theories back and forth. A blond Cylon, one Kara recognizes from the altercation in the street, approaches, the mass of people swirling away from her. “Natalie,” she says urgently, looking nervously at Kara and Laura. “We need to leave. Right now, before more of our sisters die.”  
  
Kara starts to shake her head. “There was a truce! We all agreed--”  
  
“Faith’s right,” Natalie interrupts. “We can’t resurrect. Already there’s been violence breaking out in the camp. If our people aren’t safe here--”  
  
“We’re on the same side!” Kara shouts.  
  
“No we’re not!” erupts a voice from the crowd.  
  
She looks out across them as more colonists take up the cry.  
  
“Get rid of the Cylons!”  
  
“They’re still the enemy!”  
  
Kara shakes her head in frustration. “If we don’t make peace with them, we’re all dead!” The grumbles continue, volume mounting.  
  
“Starbuck.” At the edge of the platform, Boomer’s holding out her hand. Kara pulls her up.  
  
The shouting increases as Boomer steps onstage. Kara flinches when she sees Cally snarl something, holding Nicky close. “Hey!” she shouts. “Quiet!” She looks at Boomer, who nods. Kara steps back.  
  
Boomer stares out at the crowd for a long moment, waiting for them to fall silent, before she finally speaks. “I’m a Cylon,” she begins. “But for two years I believed I was a human. I lived with you, flew with you, shared a head with you. I remember exactly what it was like to be human--but I’m a Cylon. And I’ve been confused for a long time, but the truth is...” She pauses, looking down at their faces, finding Sharon’s. “The truth is there’s hardly any difference at all. You’ve done horrible, unforgivable things to us and we’ve done horrible, unforgivable things to you. But we all need each other and our children to survive, because the Gods aren’t going to step in and save us. The universe doesn’t just forgive you and let you come back from extinction because you’re better than your enemy. If we kill each other, we’re gone.”  
  
She surveys the crowd, looking from Cally to Faith to Jammer to Helo. No one’s shouting now. “Those Cylons who have chosen to trust you over their own people, who know that what we did before was wrong--they’re dying for us all right now. They have no reason to trust that we’ll show them peace when they land except that they’re offering it in return.”  
  
Her gaze finds Lee in the back of the tent. “On the day that Caprica fell, the Admiral gave a speech. He said that during the first war, humanity never asked why it deserved to survive. Well, you don’t deserve it. Neither do we. But we all want to survive anyway. We want more than that. We want to live, and be happy, and raise our children in peace. Hera was the first. There will be more. And if we can build that together, maybe we will deserve to survive.”  
  
Kara’s hand slips into hers, squeezes tight. Boomer glances over gratefully, then back out at the crowd.  
  
“So say we all.” Lee’s voice carries in the silence. The room shifts, looking to him.  
  
“So say we all,” Helo repeats, his arm around his wife and daughter.  
  
Slowly the words build, wrapping around the tent, spoken by humans and Cylons together. A few stay silent, but no one interrupts the chant.  
  
Kara looks out, finds Leoben easily. He’s smiling up at her. She smiles back.  
  
*  
  
The battle above ends in a matter of minutes, the allied Colonial and Cylon forces destroying or chasing away Cavil’s ships. Kara stays quiet in the meetings that ensue, listening while Lee insists on settlement on New Caprica with fortified defenses and Roslin and Helo argue the need to find Earth before Cavil does. In the end there’s a compromise: the Pegasus will stay with the settlement and the Galactica will continue onward. The Cylons too, will divide, and Boomer goes to tell them they have a real choice to make for the first time.  
  
It’s only when the rest has been decided and Adama turns to her, resting a hand on her shoulder, that Kara speaks. “I’m coming with you.”  
  
Bill smiles, squeezes her arm, but it’s Lee who Kara’s watching. She sees the protest in his eyes before his face hardens. When he nods to the rest of the group and heads out of the tent, Kara follows him.  
  
“Hey,” she says softly, her breath a cloud in the fall air.  
  
Lee turns back toward her. Night has fallen while they deliberated, and his face is lit only by the scattered torches and lanterns set out along the streets.  
  
She steps closer and he holds his ground.  
  
Lee opens his mouth, then closes it, clenching his jaw. Eventually he speaks. “You don’t have to go, Kara. If you want to stay--”  
  
She shakes her head. “I need to go, Lee. I don’t have an explanation for why, but I think maybe I’m supposed to.” Just saying it scares her, but she owes him the truth.  
  
He nods, resigned and tired, and starts to leave.  
  
“Lee,” she says, a hint of pleading in her voice. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.  
  
He shakes his head, but she sees the hurt in his eyes. He stares at her for a long moment before speaking. “It was the best night of my life, Kara.” Lee’s voice wavers, and suddenly he’s not hiding behind indifference anymore, he’s just looking at her like she broke his heart.  
  
Kara moves before she’s even thought it through, wraps her arms around him, holds him tightly. Her throat is thick with all the things she’s never said to him, has no idea how to say to him. Isn’t sure she’ll get another chance to say. “I’m sorry I frakked it up,” she says into his shoulder.  
  
Lee hugs her back, and they fit into place. “Everybody’s got a skill.”  
  
She laughs but she’s crying, and he’s holding her too, and the worlds are finally righted. They stand together a long time.  
  
Eventually Lee presses his lips to Kara’s forehead, then takes a step back, holding onto her hand. “Good luck on your journey, Kara Thrace.”  
  
“Yeah.” She smiles through damp eyes, wincing as she tries to smile. “You too, Lee Adama.”  
  
They hold on for a moment before letting go, heading off in opposite directions into the night.  
  
*  
  
His sisters are sitting on the steps of a house, steps freshly painted a light blue to match the sky. Leoben settles beside them, shoulder to shoulder with Boomer. “I was proud of you today,” he says softly.  
  
Boomer leans against him for a moment. “I meant it,” she says. “I loved Galen. The way you two love Kara and Gaius. And if we can feel that, if it’s real...then we’re the same. Aren’t we?”  
  
Caprica looks at Leoben over the top of Boomer’s head, shares a solemn smile with him. “It’ll be good to find Earth,” she says softly. “To start over.”  
  
Boomer stiffens then, shifts up a step so she can look down at both of them. “I don’t think we can.”  
  
Leoben frowns. “It’s out there, Boomer. Kara--”  
  
She’s shaking her head. “We don’t get a fresh start. We just get to take what we have and keep going.” She takes a deep breath. “So I’m staying here.”  
  
Caprica reaches out, clutches at her hand, “Boomer!”  
  
Boomer squeezes back. “It’ll be alright.” She grins. “Let me know when you find Earth.”  
  
*  
  
It takes the better part of a week for the humans to sort out who will go and who will stay, for the Cylons to gather up their remaining baseships and organize them to guard New Caprica while Natalie’s joins Galactica on the search for Earth. They reload and refuel and everyone begins to say goodbye.  
  
Kara teases Boomer when she hears the rook has been elected President, and grins at Lee as he stands beside her, the Admiral of the New Caprica fleet. She says her farewells to Cally and Barolay and most of the remaining resistance fighters, and then there’s only one thing left to do.  
  
*  
  
Leoben waits where he’s waited before. It’s a place he always lives, here in the dust, waiting for Kara to come for him. In the distance, he can see the home they shared for the span of an hour. It’s hard for him to sit still this time; his thoughts churn as he remembers what passed between them. Kara laughing in his arms, arching into his kisses. For the first time he knows impatience. Time is running out like sand through his fingers.  
  
The last Raptors are preparing to leave when she finally arrives. Kara stands before him, studying the ground as she folds her arms across her chest. “Are you coming?” she asks sullenly.  
  
He hears the tremor in her voice, the fear that he’ll tell her to go on alone. His chest tightens as he hears something else: she’s missed him, too. Leoben reaches out and rests a hand on her folded arms. “I’ll always be with you, Kara.”  
  
Her eyes meet his sharply. She nods once, accepting the promise, then pulls away. “I’m not going because of you,” Kara reminds him as she turns, heading for the Raptor.  
  
Leoben smiles and walks alongside her.  
  
 **End Part One**


	8. Chapter 8

****[Destiny](http://www.bartleby.com/253/163.html)  
by A.E.  
  
LIKE winds or waters were her ways:  
The flowing tides, the airy streams,  
Are troubled not by any dreams;  
They know the circle of their days.  
  
Like winds or waters were her ways:  
They heed not immemorial cries;  
They move to their high destinies  
Beyond the little voice that prays.  
  
She passed into her secret goal,  
And left behind a soul that trod  
In darkness, knowing not of God,  
But craving for its sister soul.

  
 **  
** **Part Two**  
  
A month passes as an impossible convoy of battlestar and baseship travels through the stars in search of a mythic planet. Tensions rise and fall as the occupants of both ships get used to each other. Kara does her best to stay out of it.  
  
Gaius’ first step on the scavenger hunt for Earth turns out to be a beacon infected with some kind of Cylon-attacking virus. Cottle inoculates the human models as quickly as possible with Hera’s blood, but the Cylons are left chilled by what it is they’ve given up. Kara finds her own heart racing when she sees the first Six die of the disease as Leoben prays over her. The images of those lost to the virus begin to appear along one hallway on the baseship. Resentment between humans and Cylons begin to ease. But the beacon proves too eroded to be useful, and the Fleet slows to a stop, mired in uncertainty about where to go next.  
  
Kara submerges herself in the duties of CAG, avoiding any down time. Avoiding him. But even in work there’s no avoiding the dull throb of loss where the Chief should have been, or Tigh, or even Lee. In the halls and rooms that were once home, there are too many ghosts.  
  
Everyone who wasn’t on New Caprica has litanies of questions about Sam’s death, about the revolution, coming at her from all sides at once until she can’t take it anymore. Adama doesn’t push, but after the first week he reassigns her to the Tighs’ empty quarters without asking questions. Kara accepts it with a sigh of relief and returns to work. It’s easier to believe in the mission than to think about what went on back there.  
  
Each night, though, his presence suffuses her dreams, his arm around her waist, the heat of his body warming her as she sleeps. She nestles backwards, indulging in the contact. His breath caresses her neck and she smiles. In the mornings she tells herself she dreamt of Sam, or Lee, or Zak. She tells herself she doesn’t have a destiny, and it’s not him.  
  
  
Six days after they give up on the beacon, Kara peers down a hallway, frowning. She’s always known Galactica like the back of her hand, but even after a month of visiting the baseship, she keeps getting lost. Glancing over her shoulder, she shrugs and continues.  
  
A few yards further, the floor turns abruptly from metal to the unnerving organic tissue of the raw baseship. As she eases down the corridor and emerges onto a catwalk above the baseship’s landing bay, Kara stops for a moment, staring downward. The vast rows of raiders are an impressive sight, one that still makes her tense reflexively. But she can’t help smiling as voices carry up from below: Jammer and Ishay and an Eight are trying to work out how to heal a damaged raider.  
  
Kara starts walking again before the others notice her and ask for help. It’s better for them to figure out how to interact on their own. And if she can ever find the main command room, she’s due for a meeting with the leadership about where to go next.  
  
As she passes into the next stretch of hallway, the floor becomes metal again and Kara breathes easier. Then she comes to a door. Kara pauses with her hands on her hips. Every door on this frakking ship looks the same: she could find more of the creepy, empty Cylon bodies on the other side; or Gaius and Caprica having sex again; or her meeting. She rolls her eyes and gets it over with.  
  
It’s none of those things. At first Kara’s not even sure what it is that she’s seeing. A single resurrection tub, except sunken into the floor. And the woman in it isn’t a Cylon she’s ever seen before.  
  
“Life support enabled,” the woman says. “Exchanging breath for breath the machine lives. The five lights of the apocalypse are kindled as one.”  
  
Kara eases closer, mesmerized. “Hello?” she asks, wondering if the woman is drugged or crazy or both.  
  
Eyes snap to hers, hold her gaze intently. When Kara looks away, she gasps in horror; the woman’s body is twisted, literally woven into the ship by cords and wires.  
  
“Did they do this to you?” she demands. “The Cylons? Where did you come from?”  
  
The woman speaks, though if it’s an answer Kara doesn’t understand. “Genesis leads to exodus that never ends. From the shore the view is always the same and never the same.”  
  
Kara kneels down at the edge of the tub, peering into it. It seems almost like she’s talking to an oracle. Or Leoben. She tries to catch the woman’s eyes again. “Do you know where I can find the others?” she asks, feeling insane.  
  
A hand snatches her wrist, drawing her close with impossible strength. “Lightening turns sand into glass. What was broken becomes unbroken. You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end. End of line.”  
  
The hand releases her and slips into the water; the woman’s eyes close and her head falls limp. Kara is frozen in place.  
  
“What did you say?” she whispers. Then she stands abruptly, brushing off her clothes as if the words have left a trace behind she can remove. Kara backs away, heart racing, then takes off out of the room, down the hall, adrenaline driving her steps. She’s going nowhere, directionless, just running. The woman’s words spin around and around in her head until suddenly she tears around a corner and staggers to a halt in front of the group she was looking for.  
  
“Good to see you, Captain,” Roslin greets her with just a hint of disapproval.  
  
Kara pants, trying to act normally. “I got lost,” she bites out. “Sorry.”  
  
Natalie frowns in confusion, then continues what she was saying. “We’ve been through the books of scriptures that were left to us and there are references to the Temple of Hopes, just as there are--”  
  
“In Pythia!” Roslin says excitedly. “Show me.”  
  
Kara tries to catch her breath as Caprica brings out a tome and the women begin to pore over it, but the words keep playing through her mind: _the harbinger of death_.  
  
“Kara?”  
  
She looks up sharply at the sound of Leoben’s voice. He’s frowning at her intently. Kara turns away, tries to focus on what the others are saying. Adama is impatiently scrolling through star charts on a modified Cylon display while Laura and the Sixes compare prophecy. Kara moves to join him, lets her mind focus only on the static of the stars.  
  
“There!” Leoben bursts out suddenly. The others turn to him as one. He’s pointing to a particularly bright area of the display, a star cluster shrouded in radiation clouds. “That’s where we’ll find the temple.”  
  
Natalie and Caprica close their books, leaning closer to see.  
  
“We couldn’t get there if we wanted to,” Adama protests. “The radiation would destroy our ships.”  
  
“The baseships have sufficient shielding. And if we can find the planet’s exact coordinates we may be able to make it in one jump,” Natalie suggests. “Galactica could survive the trip if we went ahead and found the safest path.”  
  
Adama grimaces. Even after a month, Kara knows he’s wary of dealing with the Cylons.  
  
“Bill,” Laura says in her most diplomatic voice.  
  
“It’s a Cylon’s vision!” he protests.  
  
“It’s a vision.” She smiles faintly, coyly. “You’ve followed those before.”  
  
Kara meets Leoben’s eyes, sees a familiar certainty there. He nods, asking silently for her support. She purses her lips. “What have we got to lose?” she asks, turning to the Admiral. “If it’s safe, then it won’t take us more than a few days to either find the temple or rule this quadrant out.”  
  
Bill glowers at her a moment for taking the other side, then shrugs it off. “Fine. Go back to Galactica and coordinate.”  
  
“Yes, sir.” Kara nods to the group and turns back down the hall.  
  
“Kara.”  
  
It’s almost a relief when she realizes Leoben is following her; at least she won’t get lost again.  
  
He catches her arm, pulls her to a stop. “Thank you,” he says earnestly. “There will be answers for all of us once we get there.”  
  
Kara shrugs, suddenly afraid of what those answers might be. His hand on her wrist is familiar, drawing her back to New Caprica. His thumb strokes lightly at her pulsepoint, and Kara resists a shiver. In the weeks since they left, this is the first time she’s allowed him to touch her. “I saw,” she starts, struggling with the words. “I found a room before, by accident. A woman in a tub.”  
  
Leoben’s eyes light up. “The hybrid!” He’s excited. “Did she speak to you?”  
  
“Did you make her that way?” Kara demands. “Where did she come from?”  
  
“The hybrids control all our ships,” he answers. “They were made by the Centurions, even before we were. They live in the stream, navigate both space and time.”  
  
Kara shudders at the thought of it.  
  
“Did she speak to you?” Leoben asks again. His grip tightens.  
  
She swallows hard. “No,” she bites out, jerking free. “No.”  
  
Kara heads off again, walking as fast as she can. If she has a destiny, it cannot possibly be that. _The harbinger of death._  Almost immediately she reaches the landing bay where a Raptor is waiting for her. Kara darts inside, eager for the blank relief of space.  
  
*  
  
Leoben finds the Galactica strangely familiar, but after all it’s Kara’s home. As he leaves the final planning session the next day, Adama offers him an escort back to his heavy raider. Leoben merely shakes his head and says Caprica will show him the way. In truth he doesn’t need a guide, but he spares the Admiral’s feelings. Anyway, he adds, he wants to check on Hera. He glances at the President to make his point and Adama dismisses him with a glare and a nod.  
  
As they step in to the hall, Caprica smiles at him. “That went well,” she says softly, steering them toward the hanger deck.  
He nods absently.  
  
She cocks her head. “I thought you’d be excited. With any luck, tomorrow we’ll find the Temple of Hopes.”  
  
“I am.” He tries to sound it.  
  
“Leoben,” Caprica stops at the corridor that will lead her away to the quarters that she and Gaius share. “I know you miss her. Kara.” She reaches out to touch his hand and they’re suddenly at the edge of her lake, in the safety and privacy of projection.  
  
Leoben gazes out at the view. “I’m here to be her guide, not her lover,” he says quietly.  
  
“God is love,” she corrects. “Your love for her is His will.”  
  
He turns quickly, meeting her eyes. “I can’t be either. She denies what we shared.”  
  
Caprica smiles helplessly. “It’s still the truth. Look how far love has gotten us already.”  
  
Leoben stares into her eyes, then drops her hand, unravels the projection.  
  
“She’s staying in the old XO quarters,” Caprica says softly. “Down that way.”  
  
He nods in acceptance, and heads down the hall, follows the ripples of Kara’s presence. The intensity builds as he reaches her door.  
  
After a moment’s hesitation, Leoben opens the hatch and gasps, shuddering with the power of what he sees.  
  
“What are you doing here?” Kara demands, moving quickly to stand between him and Hera.  
  
Images races through him: a temple in the side of a mountain, swirling clouds, Hera crying. Kara in his arms.  
  
“Leoben?” Her voice, her hand on his shoulder, bring him back to himself with a jolt. He steps further into the room, letting the hatch fall closed. His fingers trace through the air, exploring the paintings that cover the walls.  
  
“You did these?” he asks in awe, taking in the stars.  
  
“Yeah,” Kara says, agitated. She settles down to the floor, crouching beside Hera, who’s playing with her own set of paints. “It’s nothing. Something to decorate.”  
  
The stars call out to him; all else fades away as his eyes are drawn into the star cluster they’re about to visit. “This is beautiful,” Leoben offers softly.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
When he turns, she’s smiling shyly at him and for a moment Leoben sees Kara as a girl, painting fiercely, expelling all the darkness her mother poured into her. “You’re beautiful,” he says, and means so much more than the words.  
  
Kara looks away, down at Hera. “The hybrid,” she says nervously, and then she gasps, her eyes widening in fear.  
  
Leoben looks at her sharply, then follows her gaze downward. On Hera’s page there are three concentric circles: blue and yellow and red.  
  
“Did you show her that?” Kara begs, looking up at him in terror.  
  
Leoben shakes his head slowly. He smiles Hera. The power of it is filling the room, filling him. “There’s nothing to be scared of, Kara,” he says tenderly. “Hera is God’s tool just as you are, just as I am. We all do his will.”  
  
“Get out,” she snaps, leaping to her feet, pushing him backward until he staggers into the wall beside the door. Her hands rest on his chest and for a moment he sees her eyes darken, feels himself respond to her closeness. Then Kara seems to realize it too and releases him. “Leave us alone.”  
  
He opens the door but stops there, looking back over his shoulder at her, at the child. He can see Kara’s fear, the way she continues to fight all the signs of her destiny even as they build around her. The need to take that fear away is even stronger than the need to do God’s work. “I love you, Kara,” Leoben says softly. He leaves before she can reply.  
  
*  
  
The journey through the radiation clouds passes easily enough, to Adama’s disgruntled satisfaction and Natalie’s quiet delight. The Raptors fill quickly with humans and Cylons eager to be on solid ground again, at least for a few hours. The twos and sixes and eights mingle with pilots and marines and knuckledraggers, and if there’s resentment on either side, no one mentions it aloud.  
Kara sets foot on the planet with a mix of trepidation and relief. She doesn’t want to think about what it means that Leoben’s vision was a true one, but at least if they can find the temple they’ll be one step closer to Earth.  
  
Hera runs over, attaching herself to Kara’s leg, and she picks the child up with a smile.  
  
“We thought we’d give her a breath of fresh air,” Athena says, walking up to them with Helo beside her.  
  
“We could all use one,” Kara answers, squeezing the little girl and then setting her down again.  
  
Sharon follows after Hera as she toddles off, but Helo sticks with Kara as they join the procession through the dry scrub. Leoben leads; no one questions how he knows where to go.  
  
“Hera said something about seeing Leoben yesterday,” Helo says affably after a few minutes. He waits for Kara to respond. “You still avoiding him?” he asks when she stays silent.  
  
Kara glares, then answers slowly. “Back there...on New Caprica everything was screwed up. Sam was dead, Galactica was gone.”  
  
“And you fell in love with him.” Helo’s frowning at her, trying to catch her eye.  
  
“I didn’t say that!” Kara snaps. Up ahead she sees Leoben glance back at her in concern. “Leave it alone, Helo,” she mutters. “He can’t get it out of his head that I have some magical destiny coming. And I don’t.”  
  
“Okay,” he says softly, but she can still feel him watching her.  
  
Their journey takes more than an hour, and even Kara imagines she can feel some kind of energy humming through her as Leoben leads them finally to a door in the side of a mountain.  
  
The file in, gazing up with wonder. Kara’s eyes stop on a symbol on the side of a column, her heart pounding in her chest. She’s so overcome by the horror and awe of what she’s seeing that she doesn’t notice the complete silence that’s fallen until the cocking of a gun echoes through the chamber.  
  
Then her gaze falls and she freezes at the sight before her: a dozen enemy skinjobs there already.  
  
The world erupts into motion; Kara downs two Threes before she’s even processed what’s going on. Bullets are flying in both directions and ricocheting off the walls of the temple.  
  
“Stop!” Athena screams suddenly, and everyone freezes. The only sound is Hera wailing as a One clutches her to his chest, a gun to her head. Around the floor, bodies are scattered: the threes, a four and five sprawled across each other, an eight clutching at her leg and a marine kneeling over one of the knuckledraggers.  
  
“Didn’t see that coming?” the One sneers at Leoben. “So much for your foresight.” He pulls Hera around to shield him and she whimpers, squirming.  
  
“You can die, too,” Leoben says calmly. “Forever. Don’t force us to shoot you.” He glances at Kara and she aims her weapon at the One’s head.  
  
The One opens his mouth, grinning vindictively, and in that moment Leoben rushes him, catching the One around the waist as Hera tumbles to the ground.  
  
“Now!” Leoben orders and Kara fires. The rest of the marines and pilots are shooting again, too, and in a moment the rest of the enemy forces have fallen.  
  
Kara feels like the world is moving in slow motion. The One is on the ground, fallen where she hit him. And on top of him is another body, his short blond hair dark with blood. “No,” she whispers, and flies across the room, crouching over him. The harbinger of death. There are tears on her cheeks. She turns him onto his back. His eyes are closed, his face a mask of death.


	9. Chapter 9

“Gods,” Kara gasps, “gods...” She cradles his body in her arms, her fingers pressed hard against his wound even though it’s far too late to do any good. The world fades to silence around her and she can’t breathe.  
  
A hand settles on her shoulder and Kara fights back a wail as she turns, expecting to see Helo.  
  
Leoben stares down into her face, his eyes unlike any other two.  
  
Now she’s crying with relief as he kneels beside her, closing his brother’s eyes and laying him straight on the floor.  
  
“I thought,” Kara manages to say, and Leoben cups her cheek, nodding, pulls her tightly into his arms.  
  
“I’ve got you,” he says firmly. “I’m not letting go.”  
  
*  
  
Leoben watches over Kara, glaring at the others to keep them away, as the allied forces regroup, taking stock and treating wounds and sending Hera back to Galactica in return for reinforcements. Leoben doesn’t pay attention to them, just guards Kara as she whispers final rites over those who have died. He’s shaken by his brother’s death as well, by the brutality of it. The finality. This is what they did.  
  
Across the chamber, Caprica is standing with Gaius as he takes some sort of readings. When her eyes meet Leoben’s, she looks as haunted as he feels. Eventually Gaius seems to finish and Caprica approaches them. “Are you alright?” she asks softly.  
  
Kara stands to attention beside him. “Of course.”  
  
His sister nods slowly. “Adama and Roslin and Natalie--they’re asking if we’ve figured out what the temple means, where we should go.” She looks back and forth between them. “Do you have any idea?”  
  
He senses Kara’s stillness beside him, and turns. She looks at him, white with fear, and Leoben holds out his hand. He nods to Caprica and she leaves.  
  
“Do you know what will happen?” Kara asks tightly.  
  
He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No. But something will.”  
  
Kara lays her palm against his and lets him lead her toward the raised stone circle painted with her mandala. Leoben steps onto it, feels the sudden rush of the stream that precedes a vision, and reaches out to take both her hands and pull her up with him.  
  
“No,” she begs for just a moment, pulling him toward her instead, and Leoben is caught by the despair in her face. But in the moment before he gives in and lets go of her, Kara nods in acquiescence and steps up beside him.  
  
Visions storm through him, washing away any connection to the present moment except the faint sensation of Kara suddenly propelled into his arms and the knowledge that she’s sharing this with him, the stream tearing through both of their minds at once. They’re cast about on the waves of time, images flaring briefly: a child’s painting, a girl’s mural, his own crude rendering on the Gemenon Traveller, a storm, a temple, a supernova. The swirls of color explode around them, all-encompassing, as the world seems to spin. There’s power here that Leoben’s never felt before, and he trembles.  
  
At last the waters recede, and he comes back to himself, to Kara shaking in his arms. Leoben looks over her shoulder, and startles at the five glowing figures standing around them. He blinks and they’re gone.  
  
“Leoben?” Caprica asks softly, worriedly, from just beyond the platform.  
  
He pants, wrapping his arms tighter around Kara. His heart is still racing. “We have to find supernova,” he tells her. “That’s where we’re going.”  
  
*  
  
The paint feels like blood on her fingers as she drags them urgently across the wall, blotting out the stars and the depths of space with a bright streak of pure color. The image is so familiar Kara thinks she could paint it with her eyes closed. She sees it then, too.  
  
Leoben’s hand settles on her shoulder but she doesn’t turn, can’t now that she’s seen him dead in her arms.  
  
“Kara,” he says softly. “It’s alright.”  
  
She whirls on him, then, nearly screaming. “Nothing’s alright! How can you just give in to this, let it control you? I don’t want this!” She shoves at his shoulders, her fists beating at his chest. Leoben stands still beneath the onslaught of blows until suddenly his sleeve tears free of his shirt and she can see his skin, red and bruising from the force of her hands.  
  
Kara freezes, staring at it, and starts to cry.  
  
Leoben reaches out, trying to pull her into his arms but she moves backward, pressing herself into the paint. “Don’t,” she pleads.  
  
“All I want is to love you,” Leoben begs hoarsely.  
  
“You shouldn’t,” Kara says wretchedly. “You’ll only end up dead. It’s my frakking destiny.”  
  
Leoben shakes his head. “What are you talking about?”  
  
She folds her arms, closes her eyes, remembering. “The hybrid.” She looks up at him, tense. “She told me...she said I’m the harbinger of death. That I’ll lead you all to your end.”  
  
He stares at her, not even breathing. And more than anything else, that terrifies her. “It’s true, isn’t it?” Kara whispers. “It’s all I’ve ever done. My mother died, and Zak, and Sam--” her voice breaks. “Everyone who gets too close.”  
  
“No.” He cuts her off urgently, reaching out to lay his hands on her shoulders. Leoben shakes his head as he speaks, his eyes frantic. “I’ve never seen that. The hybrids speak in riddles and false logic. They see the stream even more abstractly than I can--”  
  
“She said my name,” Kara says mournfully.  
  
“You brought death to all the Cylons, Kara,” Leoben says urgently. “Because of you we destroyed resurrection. That’s over already.”  
  
Kara takes a shaky breath. She’s not sure she believes him, but it’s the first thing that’s offered any hope in days. “But you still think I have a destiny. You believe your God is controlling everything and it doesn’t matter what we want.”  
  
His thumbs rub soothing circles against her collarbones, but when he looks at her his eyes are lost. “I always have...” Leoben takes a slow breath. “I see the stream, Kara. I feel the cycles in the beat of my heart, and yours. I was made to be more than a man. I’m compelled to do the work of God, whether I understand or not.”  
  
Kara smiles oddly. “I remember thinking about my mother that way, when I was a little girl.”  
  
He’s silent for a long moment.  
  
“When I was seven my dad left, you know?” She waits for him to nod. “And after a little while I realized he was really never coming back. And he was the only one of them who’d ever even really liked me.” She chokes out something between a laugh and sob, staring off into the distance. “Mama used to tell me to clean my room, or do my homework, and however well I did it she’d find something wrong and beat me, or burn me...Once I played a prank and she broke all my fingers.” Kara swallows hard, meeting his gaze. “And I was terrified, every minute, not that she’d hurt me but that she’d finally give up and leave me, too.” Leoben strokes his thumb across her cheek and she winces. Her voice goes flat. “But it didn’t really matter, because what I got from her was never love. And if your God is so much about love, Leoben, he wouldn’t hurt you.”  
  
His face falls before her eyes; he looks more broken than she’s ever seen him. His hands drop to her shoulders, clutching her as if to keep himself upright. “We were made to do God’s will, Kara.”  
  
She shakes her head, smiling with peace, with brilliance. “We were made to be free.”  
  
His breath stutters out in a gasp and Kara presses forward, wrapping her arms around him as hard as she can. Leoben’s tears are hot on her neck.  _“I_  love you,” she whispers into his ear. She presses her lips to his throat, kisses up the side of his jaw. His skin tastes like salt, smells like sweat; his pulse beats strong beneath her lips.  
  
Kara pulls back to see him, and Leoben smiles.  
  
“I love you, too, Kara,” he answers.  
  
She nods, awe in her eyes. “I know.” She kisses him then, softly, tenderly. Leoben’s lips tremble against hers and she presses herself into his arms, sighing into his mouth.  
  
The violence and urgency that was between them before is gone now, and they come together slowly, reverently, wiping away the tracks of tears and yellow paint as they undress each other. Kara aches at the way Leoben watches her every reaction, the way he smiles suddenly when he finds a caress that makes her gasp in pleasure. She does the same in turn, searching out the most ticklish spot on his side, the noises he makes when she runs her tongue over his nipple. There’s time this way for her to marvel at every imperfection: a mole on his shoulder blade, the bend of his cock, the finest wrinkles around his eyes.  
  
And then she finally settles over him and he thrusts into her, filling her completely, and it’s so perfect she can’t breathe.  
  
“Like that?” Leoben whispers, and the slight hesitation of his words catches her.  
  
Kara looks at him in wonderment. “Yeah,” she murmurs, breathless with pleasure. She tightens around him, watches his face clench at the sensation. “Is that good for you?” she teases.  
  
And he grins, lazily, gorgeously, and pulls her down for a kiss.  
  
They lose themselves in each other for hours, and when they’re finally worn out they fall asleep, wrapped together in Kara’s bed, safe.  
  
*  
  
He’s in the eye of the storm and he can see them, glowing around him, the light of them blurring brighter and brighter until he can’t see anything at all--  
  
“Leoben!”  
  
He opens his eyes and Kara’s staring at him in concern.  
  
“What did you see?” she asks after a moment.  
  
Leoben leans back against the pillows, savoring the softness of Kara’s skin against his own even as his mind drifts back into the dream. “I saw the last image from the temple yesterday. The five hooded figures made of light.”  
  
“What?” she’s startled. “What are you talking about?”  
  
He stares back at her. “What did you see in the temple, Kara?”  
  
She shrugs. “My painting. The same colors, a half dozen times over. And I heard the music.”  
  
“The music?” Leoben shakes his head in confusion, in wonder.  
  
“You didn’t hear it?” Now she sounds scared.  
  
He runs his fingers through her hair, not answering. “The stream is different every time,” he finally says. “Even my brothers and I have never seen exactly the same thing. I thought since we were there together--but it’s never entirely clear.”  
  
“But you see the world like that all the time?” Kara asks softly.  
  
He takes a slow breath. “I see time differently. I see the foreshadowing of every moment, I see the future and the past as one. But not always their meaning.”  
  
“Why?” she shakes her head, marveling.  
  
“It’s the way my model has always been. It’s--” he clenches his jaw around the words, “It’s part of our connection to God.”  
  
Kara sighs, and then answers slowly. “I can see how that would make you believe in destiny.”  
  
He strokes his hand up and down her arm. “It’s more than that, Kara. And less. I have seen you glorious, and I believe it will be real. But all I know is that I’m supposed to help you.”  
  
“Because God wants you to?” Kara’s eyes meet his, and he can see her sudden insecurity in her nakedness.  
  
He reaches out to cup her cheek. “I want to.”  
  
She smiles shyly, presses a kiss to his palm. Then she pulls away, her face drawn again. “So who was it that you saw?”  
  
And he’s confused then too, because the truth is he doesn’t know.  
  
*  
  
Caprica and Athena stare at them in confusion as Leoben tries to describe his vision.  
  
“Are you sure they were people?” Caprica presses.  
  
Leoben frowns. “I thought so...” He shakes his head impatiently. “Who could they be?”  
  
“Gods?” Kara asks, teasing faintly. She paces. “Animal or mineral?”  
  
The others look at her. Only Athena grins, getting the joke. “Human or Cylon?”  
  
Leoben’s eyes flare. Understanding is almost there. He can’t quite push past it, but Kara catches sight of his face.  
  
“Cylons?” she asks. “Aren’t there supposed to be twelve of you?”  
  
He’s straining against something he can’t see in the darkness. He has a sudden, sharp headache.  
  
“There are,” Caprica says quickly. “But we’re not allowed...”  
  
“Not allowed by who?” Kara presses.  
  
Leoben shakes his head free of the pain, free of understanding. He looks worriedly between his sisters. “I can’t reach it.” He reaches for Kara’s hand. “We need to ask the hybrid.”  
  
*  
  
He feels Kara’s nervousness, the way she hangs back. He smiles at her, then dips his hand into the water, takes hold of the hybrid.  
  
Her eyes turn to him, her incoherent mumbling breaking off. “He sees,” she whispers. “He sees them.”  
  
“Who are they?” Leoben asks softly. “Who did I see?”  
  
“Life support,” the hybrid answers. She starts to turn away. “Five lights of apocalypse and rebirth shine the way home.”  
  
He frowns. He closes his eyes, tries to follow the hybrid into the stream. He glimpses Cavil, seems almost to see something else, and then a door slams shut in his mind. Leoben gasps for breath, staring down at the hybrid.  
  
“What is it?” Kara asks, kneeling beside him, her hand on his shoulder.  
  
He shakes his head slowly, looks back and forth between Caprica and Athena. “There’s something wrong.”  
  
  
Leoben is lost in thought as they head down the corridor. Kara walks beside him, shoulder to shoulder. It’s the best she has to offer.  
  
She doesn’t speak until he finally slows down. “What does it mean?” she asks quietly.  
  
He looks at her uncertainly. “We don’t know who they are. What he took from us.”  
  
Kara nods. “Are we going to go look for them? Do we have to figure it out?”  
  
Leoben shrugs. “It’s connected to Earth. I can feel it.”  
  
Kara steps closer, resting her hands on his chest. “We could just go back to New Caprica. Build a house and a life and...be happy. No gods or destinies or visions, just...”  
  
Leoben lays his hands over hers. “It’s not about being happy.”  
  
She tries to jerk her hands away. “Maybe it should be.”  
  
“But Kara.” He waits for her eyes, laces his fingers through hers. “I am.” And he smiles shyly, wonderously. Like it’s an epiphany.  
  
And she laughs, and presses herself into his arms.


	10. Chapter 10

His body is warm behind hers, pressed close from the nape of her neck to the backs of her knees, and Kara is content to drift in and out of sleep. Leoben’s arm is heavy across her waist, their fingers laced together.  
  
A pulsing sound stirs her and she raises her head, turns sleepily toward the wall where she laid down the first ring of color yesterday, the brightest yellow she had. It’s throbbing, darkening, the colors swirling faster and faster and drawing her in. The stars behind it are glittering, taking on a life beyond their paint as she slides out of bed, out of Leoben’s arms, and reaches out for the center, the thing she can’t see--  
  
Kara jerks, comes suddenly awake in Leoben’s arms. His hand clenches on hers and she twists, needing to see him, needing it to be real.  
  
“Kara?” he asks, stroking her hair.  
  
Somewhere else on the ship a klaxon sounds, signalling the end of the current shift.  
  
“I’ll be late for my briefing,” she says quickly, slipping out of his arms and reaching for her bra. “I have to go.”  
  
*  
  
Kara can’t seem to get her thoughts in order as she lays out the next month’s rotation for the CAPs. The pilots are looking at her strangely, she thinks, but maybe she’s imagining things. By the end of the half hour she shakes it off and heads for the board, switches Kat’s name for her own.  
  
“You okay, Starbuck?” Helo asks from her elbow.  
  
She pastes on a grin. “Always. Just need to get out in the black for a bit.”  
  
“Write me in,” he offers. “I’ll fly your wing, like the good old days.”  
  
Now she smiles more genuinely. “Gods, remember when we could just frak up all the time and it didn’t matter?”  
  
“Drink until we lost at Triad and frak the pain away?” he jokes.  
  
“Hey, I always won at Triad,” Kara returns. She nods. “Okay. Better go make sure your flight suit still fits.” And she puts his name down beside hers.  
  
*  
  
She’s always felt at home in the dark. Closets were a good hiding place when she was a kid, or under the porch when they had a porch. Darkness is safe, and Kara flies through it with a whoop of laughter.  
  
Beside her Karl flips his bird over, facing down toward the planet they’re orbiting while Galactica and Natalie’s ship refuel off another baseship that jumped in to service them. It’s been two weeks since they left the Temple of Hopes, and they have another two jumps until they reach the ancient nebula that’s their latest goal.  
  
“What are you doing?” Kara sings out.  
  
“It’s good to see clouds,” he says softly. “I’ll be glad when we find Earth, when Hera can see this again.”  
  
“So say we all,” Kara says softly, and flips beside him. The clouds have a golden glow and there’s something familiar about them she can’t quite place.  
  
As they shoot forward, the gold shifts into red and her heart starts to pound. And then they’re flying over it, a storm the size of a continent, and Kara can’t even breathe because she’s seen it before, and she knows what it means.  
  
“Starbuck!” Helo’s sudden shout pulls her back to herself as her Viper starts to sink through the clouds toward the storm, jerking wildly in the force of the winds. “What the frak! Get back here!”  
  
Clutching at the controls, she jerks the nose up again, trying to ignore the way her hands are shaking. Kara blows past Helo and back toward Galactica.  
  
“What was that?” Helo calls after her, but she doesn’t answer.  
  
  
“Hey!” Helo shouts to her as they climb out of their Vipers. “Is something wrong with your bird?”  
  
Kara turns away, walking as fast as she can, then stops short at the sight of a little girl blocking the corridor to the head. A little girl with tears on her cheeks and long blond hair. She stares, frozen, until Helo grabs her arm and pulls her around.  
  
“What happened out there?”  
  
She twists back but the girl is gone. “The storm...” she starts. “The colors, they looked like--”  
  
“What colors?” Helo frowns in confusion.  
  
“The yellow and red, and blue at the center...” Kara trails off fearfully as Helo shakes his head.  
  
“It was just a storm, Kara. Just a grey blotch of clouds.”  
  
She exhales with a noise that sounds like crying, then nods, to herself as much as him. “I don’t know,” Kara says shakily. “I don’t know what happened out there.”  
  
  
Kara peels out of her flight suit and pulls on BDUs without even stopping to get clean, then breaks into a run as she heads through the ship toward her quarters, hoping he’s still there. She pulls open the hatch still panting and freezes at what she finds. A smile slowly curves across her face.  
  
Leoben is standing at the far end of the room, against the wall that has been her canvas, methodically painting it white.  
  
“Hey,” Kara says softly, her racing heart finally starting to slow.  
  
He turns to her, his eyes bright at the sight of her. “Kara.”  
  
She moves toward him, sliding an arm around his waist as she stares up at the blankness.  
  
“A fresh start,” he says softly. “I want you to be happy.”  
  
Tears prick at her eyes and she nestles into his arms. She’s quiet for a long moment. “I think it might be too late,” Kara whispers into Leoben’s shoulder. He looks down at her in concern. “It’s out there. The storm--I saw it. Not like a vision, like it was real. But Helo didn’t.” She lets out a shuddering breath. “I nearly flew into it.”  
  
His arms tighten around her, squeezing her close, and Kara lets him even when it starts to hurt. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Leoben eventually says.  
  
Kara nods as his embrace eases. “I just feel like I’m losing it, seeing that. And I saw--myself. As a kid. But then she was gone. I don’t know why.”  
  
Leoben stares down at her, fear in his own eyes. “I don’t know either.”  
  
She sighs, then kisses him, reaching out for comfort. He kisses her back, long and hard until they’re falling to the bed, making love like something is ending. For a moment as she comes, the mandala swirls before Kara’s eyes.  
  
*  
  
Leoben studies Kara’s face as she lies in bed beside him, staring off into the distance.  
  
“To know the face of God is to know madness,” he offers haltingly.  
  
She blinks up at him. “What am I supposed to do?”  
  
So long he waited for this, for his moment to guide her, the moment the universe has promised him. And he can feel the stream in him now, the pressure to tell her to follow her destiny. His lips are forming the words all on their own. Leoben clenches his jaw, holding them in. “What do you want to do?” he asks instead.  
  
Kara shakes her head. “If I go out there again...I don’t know what will happen.”  
  
He strokes her cheek, turning her face so she meets his eyes. “Then don’t go,” he tells her firmly.  
  
She looks scared. “Do you know what will happen if I do?”  
  
He offers her the truth, putting aside the fear he can’t explain. “No. But we haven’t found Earth yet. Your journey can’t be over. Whatever happens--you still have to lead us there.”  
  
Kara smiles tenderly, but her eyes are still troubled. “You really believe we’ll find it.”  
  
He rests his forehead against hers, says one of the few things he has always been certain of. “I believe we’ll walks its fields and forests together.”  
  
She tilts her chin up to kiss him lightly, and holds on tight.  
  
*  
  
Kara slips out of bed, and stares at the whitewashed wall. The shapes of nebulae and planets are bleeding through already. A ring of gold. She takes a long, slow breath and lets out a sigh. He’s right, of course. Their journey isn’t over yet. And if she can give him Earth, it will finally end.  
  
She reaches for Hera’s fingerpaints, in the box with her own, and marks three unadorned circles on the wall, a simple emblem no bigger than her hand. And in the center, two small figures. He’ll understand.  
  
She doesn’t stop to wonder why she needs to leave this message, or why her fingers shake as she zips her flight suit back on.  
  
She’s done with questions.  
  
  
Kara signs out her Viper, working through the safety check-list as she has thousands of times. She runs her fingers over her name as she climbs up, a rush of affection filling her. She salutes Helo from across the hangar deck, then seals her canopy before he can approach.  
  
Adama’s voice crackles over her comm, wishing her a safe flight, and for a moment Kara has to clench her teeth against tears. She says a soft thank you in response, and then her ship launches into the darkness.  
  
When she lets go of the fear and uncertainty, she can see beauty in the storm. It’s a familiar sight--she’s been heading toward this moment since she was a child, and somehow it feels like coming home. Kara flies toward it.  
  
With a jolt she’s out of her Viper and into a vision. The little girl is in front of her again, little Kara.  
  
She kneels down, reaching out to her, but the child doesn’t see her, starts whimpering, pleading. “Don’t leave me!”  
  
A man squats down beside Kara, cupping the girl’s face in his hands, kissing her forehead. “I love you,” he says roughly, tears in his own eyes. “I do, baby, I promise.”  
  
Kara stares into her father’s face, bewildered at his grief. All the times her mother told this story, he never loved them enough. And then he rises, heads for the door, for his car, and Kara can see the tension in him as he struggles not to look back. For a long moment she can’t move, but little Kara starts to chase after him and then she’s running too.  
  
The car makes it to the end of the block when the little girl trips and falls, wailing in anguish and abandonment.  
  
Kara spares her a glance but doesn’t stop, runs like she’s never run before, sure somehow that this time she can catch him. The world blurs around her and suddenly she’s indoors, staggering to a stop in the center of a bar.  
  
She looks around in confusion. The tables are mostly empty, the few patrons engrossed in their drinks or their companions. The smell of stale beer, the flickering of dust in the corners--it feels as real as anywhere she’s ever been.  
  
Behind her someone plays a quick warm-up scale on a piano. Kara turns slowly.  
  
At the piano her father sighs and stretches his fingers, then leans toward the mike beside him. His cheeks are scruffy, his eyes sad, but he doesn’t seem much older than the last time she saw him.  
  
“This is for a girl I know,” he says into the mike, and starts to play.  
  
He strikes the first chord and tears spring to her eyes. Kara crosses the room. He still doesn’t see her, even as she circles the piano to look over his shoulder at his hands. She knew those hands so well.  
  
“There must be some way out of here,” he sings, the way he used to sing to her.  
  
Her eyes drift up to the music, and Kara gasps for breath, trying to understand. There are two pages laid out: one with halting notes and words in his own hand, and the other a drawing she made him, red and blue and yellow, and in the innermost ring, the two of them together.  
  
“This is not our fate,” her father sings, leaning toward her so that for a moment their cheeks are pressed together.  
  
Kara pulls away, sits down beside him, watching his face, aching.  
  
At the end of the song he waves a packet of cigarettes at the bartender and heads out the backdoor into an alley.  
  
Kara slides out after him just in time to hear the gunshot, to see Cavil standing over him, a look of contempt on his face. “Dad!” she cries out, kneeling over him. And for a moment he smiles, reaching up to touch her face.  
  
“I’ll see you on the other side,” he whispers.  
  
The world goes dark.  
  
Her Viper jerks, descending into the storm, and she can hear Helo suddenly, and Adama too, calling out to her. “It’s alright,” she whispers, as the clouds swallow her up. The music is building all around her, arching toward the bridge. “Let me go...” She can feel it swelling inside of her, and there are tears on her cheeks. Kara closes her eyes.  
  
*  
  
Leoben stumbles into the hangar bay in time to hear her words through the comm relay broadcasting from the speakers.  
  
“Let me go...”  
  
And even as Helo continues to shout at her, Leoben cries out in horror and grief. He can feel the place in the stream where Kara Thrace used to be, where she’s always been through every cycle they shared. Only she’s gone.  
  
He crumples to his knees, sobbing with a loss he’s never imagined. He knew the moment he saw her symbol what it meant, what she had done. But if she’s dead then he’s always been wrong. If she’s dead it’s because he has always been leading her to her death. And she is.  
  
“Leoben!” Caprica calls out from across the deck, looking at him in concern.  
  
Beside him Helo drops to a knee, reaching out a hand. “We’ll send a team after her,” he starts.  
  
Leoben shakes his head. He knows. Some truths cannot be escaped. At least she brought them death. Faster than thinking, he pulls a box cutter from a cart and slashes it across his throat. The pain sears through him, blood gushing warmly down his chest, across the deck, as he falls. His sister is crouching over him, trying to reach his mind but he pulls away, closes his eyes, slides into the blissful, painless dark.


	11. Chapter 11

_Lights surround him. A feeling of wholeness._  
  
  
The first thing he thinks is that he can think. The next thing he thinks is that she’ll be waiting for him, and so he opens his eyes.  
Reality is too much to contain. He’s in a resurrection tub, back among a field of bodies, reborn once more. A Three approaches, a towel in her arms and curiosity on her face. Leoben closes his eyes. Kara’s still gone. He sinks back into the fluid, breathes deep.  
  
  
 _Even in the darkness of death he’s not dead. The world is lit by the same five glowing figures he saw before, reaching out to him, offering him something._  
  
  
He comes awake with a gasp.  
  
  
Leoben isn’t sure how many times he dies before Cavil and the others decide to stop him, but suddenly he finds that he’s being held, five Simons securing his limbs and head, immobilizing him before he can drown. Working together they lift him from the tub, strap him down onto some kind of gurney. Struggle as he might, he’s alive.  
  
  
Cavil comes to ask sharp-edged questions sometimes, or D’Anna to try to charm him. Simon draws blood and inserts IVs, keeping him alive. Doral stares, frowning, from the doorway.  
  
It comes to Leoben after a while that he’s alive because he deserves this, that he misunderstood his purpose and hers and this is how God is punishing him. He thinks of Kara then, and can’t hold back the tears that slide down his cheeks at the memory of her defying God’s violence, at the thought of her in his arms promising her love.  
  
He whimpers through his tears for hours or maybe days before falling silent. His life is empty without her, the stream a faint trickle in the back of his mind. It doesn’t matter anymore.  
  
  
Soon enough Cavil grows tired of him. He shakes his head at Leoben during one of their sessions. “You could have been so much more than this,” he says scornfully. “Well, frak. You might as well wait with the others until I have time to program you more effectively.”  
  
And suddenly Leoben finds himself hoisted through the baseship by a pair of Dorals and deposited, finally, in a large chamber. The door slams shut and locks from the outside. He lays there, motionless.  
  
Behind him someone walks quickly across the floor, kneels down and cradles his head in her hands. For just a moment the touch reminds him of  _her_.  
  
“What did he do to you?” Ellen asks, and Leoben finally opens his eyes.  
  
The stream stabs through him and he’s flooded with a sense of recognition he can’t quite make sense of.  
  
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” she whispers. “It’s a mental block, just breathe through it.”  
  
Leoben gasps for breath as the pain recedes and blinks up at her in confusion.  
  
“There you go,” Ellen says softly, stroking his cheek lightly. “It’s me. I’ve got you now.”  
  
He still can’t make sense of it. Then Sam steps into view and hope flares. “Is Kara here?” he asks urgently, his vocal chords raw with disuse.  
  
“Kara?” Sam asks, bewildered.  
  
The world falls apart again.  
  
“Well, come here,” Tyrol mutters, and strides toward them across the long room, hauling Leoben to his feet and depositing him on one of the cots arranged together in one corner. Ellen drops next to him and the others arrange themselves in a loose circle.  
  
“I don’t understand,” Leoben says roughly. The world seems to be spinning around him; everything feels off kilter.  
  
“We’re Cylons,” Saul says brusquely. “We’re what’s left of the thirteenth tribe.”  
  
He stares.  
  
“Stop it, Saul,” Ellen chastises. “He doesn’t remember.” She turns toward Leoben, smiling affectionately. She opens her mouth, then stops. “What do you remember?”  
  
Leoben shakes his head, trying to clear it. “You died. On New Caprica. Natalie told the others you had been frakking Cavil and you went into the compound and helped us reach Galactica...” He trails off when he sees Ellen’s face tense, her gaze dropping to her knees.  
  
“Of course you’d remember that,” she says, her pleasant tone suddenly forced.  
  
Leoben turns to the others. “And the rest of you. You all died--”  
  
“Before the last resurrection ship went offline,” Sam finishes.  
  
The pain in his head is back.  _You’re Cylons,_  he wants to say, but he can’t make the words leave his lips.  
  
“Just in time for Cavil to lock us up and make us rebuild the frakking technology,” Tory says sourly. Tyrol reaches over to squeeze her shoulder.  
  
“You’re the final--” Leoben starts, and then the world goes black.  
  
  
He wakes to the sound of voices drifting over him.  
  
 _“If he’s here, that means the humans are still out there! Bill might be--”_  
  
“Frak, Saul, you don’t have to tell us where your priorities are!”  
  
“Listen, guys, just relax until he can tell us what he knows!”  
  
“Remember what the angel said!”  
  
“He’s waking up.”  
  
Leoben opens his eyes. The pain has faded to a dull throb, and as he nudges it gently with his mind he finds memories he’s never had before: these five, crowding around him as he was born; watching his siblings’ souls pulled from the stream; Cavil killing Daniel, and then him, too. He sighs as he looks around at his parents. “You’re the final five Cylons,” he says, and this time the pain is barely a twinge.  
  
Ellen smiles and Tory nods. “We are,” Ellen tells him. “We’re glad to see you.”  
  
“How’s the fleet?” Saul asks abruptly.  
  
Leoben shifts on the cot to look at him. “Lee and Boomer stayed back on New Caprica to manage the colony after you helped Galactica and Pegasus come back. Natalie and Adama and Roslin took Galactica off to find Earth.”  
  
Silence falls over the room. Saul’s face is suddenly drawn and blank. Leoben turns slowly to find the others frozen as well. Sam’s eyes are closed; Tyrol looks bereft. The women both look on the verge of tears. And suddenly there’s something pressing at the back of his mind, something else Leoben should know. “Tell me,” he says, already mournful.  
  
Ellen settles by his knee, rests her hand on his shoulder. “We’re from Earth. The five of us.” She sees the surprise on his face and winces. “When the other tribes left Kobol, the thirteenth tribe, the Cylons, we went to Earth. And then we made our own robots, intelligent life to do our bidding. And during the war we fought with them we nuked our planet into ash.” Through her touch he watches the war play out as she saw it, the violent explosions, the frantic efforts to create resurrection.  
  
Leoben stares at her as the visions recede, fighting back the growing realization of what’s happened. It comes anyway. He made Kara leave New Caprica to find Earth. She flew into that storm because he wanted to reach Earth. And it was only ever a dream. He’s falling into the darkness, into the singularity. She gone and the world has always been layer upon layer of lies. He turns away and closes his eyes, and doesn’t open them again.  
  
  
As the world around him fades Leoben dives into the stream, into himself, looking for the moment that the lie began. He relives every encounter they ever had, from Kara first torturing him until she lay trustingly in his arms. Then he pushes back further, into her childhood, into the early years of her mother’s anger. He feels every broken bone along with little Kara, every prayer.  
  
  
Back in the cell with the others, Leoben gasps for breath as his body fades with dehydration. Then suddenly his face contorts with joy. As he dies again, he’s laughing. She’s back.


	12. Chapter 12

Kara hums to herself, smiling, as her Viper rises through the layers of cloud: blue, then red, then gold--and suddenly Galactica is in sight. His words are fading now, dream-like in memory, but she can still feel his love wrapping around her, holding her close.  
  
“Starbuck?” Gaeta’s voice breaks excitedly over the comm.  
  
“Permission to land,” she sings out.  
  
“Granted.”  
  
  
Kara takes a deep breath and slides open the canopy of her Viper. She unbuckles, pops her helmet, and stands, reaching for the railing of the ladder.  
  
“Starbuck,” Adama says, staring up at her. He looks stunned.  
  
She scrambles down the steps and he’s hugging her, holding onto her. Kara relaxes into him, rubbing his back. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s me.”  
  
“Kara?”  
  
She turns and is pulled into Helo’s arms.  
  
He holds her tightly. “Thought we lost you,” he murmurs into her hair. “Almost gave up on you ever flying back out of that storm.”  
  
“It wasn’t so long,” she says quizzically, and then tenses when Helo pulls back with a frown.  
  
“It’s been two weeks, Kara,” he says, concerned.  
  
She stares at him. “But--” And then she stops, unable to explain. Instead she presses a quick kiss to his cheek, and whispers in his ear. “I know where Earth is. We’ll be there soon.”  
  
Helo looks at her with something between wonder and doubt. Kara grins. Then she looks around the circle who’ve gathered on the hangar deck. “Where’s Leoben?”  
  
She sees Caprica’s face fall as she asks the question. Helo’s arm tightens around her shoulders. Athena shakes her head.  
  
“Where is he?” Kara asks more sharply, looking back and forth between them.  
  
“He killed himself.” It’s Helo who answers. “He thought you were dead.”  
  
She shakes her head in confusion. “No.”  
  
Caprica moves closer, reaching out to take Kara’s hand. “He loved you,” she offers.  
  
“He  _loves_  me,” Kara snaps. “He’s alive! I can’t feel him, he’s right--” And she stops. She has no words for what’s changed inside of her, for her conviction that Leoben is alive and waiting for her. She can practically feel him beside her, pulse throbbing in time with her own. “We have to go save him,” Kara tells Caprica breathlessly, then turns back to the others.  
  
The joy on their faces has turned to uncertainty.  
  
“Let’s get you to Doc Cottle,” Laura says slowly. “Just to make sure you’ve come through the storm alright.”  
  
Kara steps toward her, smiling through her sudden confusion. “It’s okay. I know where Earth is. I can take us there.” She watches hope and fear war across Laura’s face.  
  
“First we just need to know you’re alright,” the other woman says, but her voice shakes with the desire to believe.  
  
  
While Cottle clears her, Baltar and Gaeta pepper Kara with questions, spinning out their theory about where she was and how her Viper escaped the sensors. Gaeta’s developed an idea that there’s some sort of wormhole in the cloud and won’t be talked out of it. Kara starts to explain, but realizes quickly how ridiculous the story sounds, and gives in. They need their science, these two.  
  
  
As soon as it’s over, she heads for the Agathons’ quarters. She finds Athena there with Caprica and Hera, and the women turn to her in something like alarm as she enters.  
  
“Kara!” Hera shouts, and Kara crouches, scooping the little girl into her arms. She presses a kiss to the child’s temple with a new reverence. Hera wraps her arms around Kara’s neck and snuggles close. For a moment Kara just holds on, then she smiles over  
Hera’s shoulder at Sharon and Caprica.  
  
“Welcome back,” Athena says softly.  
  
Kara nods, then sets Hera back down. “I need your help.”  
  
Caprica folds her arms, looking troubled. “He’s gone. I saw him kill himself. His chest was ripped open...” She looks away, flinching at the memory.  
  
For the first time Kara’s resolve falters, and she hears the hybrid’s words ring in her ears. The harbinger of death. But when she reaches into herself she can feel his existence, flickering in the distance. “I don’t know how to explain it,” Kara says firmly, “but he’s alive. I can feel him.”  
  
Athena nods, unconvinced. “Helo said you found Earth?” she asks, eager and wary at once.  
  
Kara smiles in relief. “I can feel it. I’ve seen it. We’re almost there.”  
  
“You have the coordinates?” Athena presses.  
  
Hera hugs Kara’s legs and she looks down, petting the girl’s dark hair. “It’s not like that. I have to follow the song.”  
  
“Starbuck,” Sharon says, the name a sob, and Kara looks up to find her friend hopeless again.  
  
“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. I can take us there.” Her voice is strained with her need to convince them, with the certainty that’s overwhelming her.  
  
“How can going through a wormhole give you knowledge like that?” Caprica asks gently. “I know you want to find Earth, but maybe you hit your head--”  
  
“It wasn’t a wormhole.” Kara looks fervently between the two of them. “I was beyond this universe. I could see everything. The whole story, the whole journey we’re on. It’s taken thousands of years and we’re finally almost finished! We’ve almost made it!” Her chest is so tight with joy she could nearly cry.  
  
The others don't answer. Kara looks back and forth between them wildly, and then drops her eyes to Hera’s upturned face. “We’re almost there,” she promises, and leaves before the Cylons can say anything more.  
  
  
Adama welcomes her into his quarters with an arm around her shoulders and a glass of water.  
  
“So Cottle says I’m fine,” Kara starts.  
  
“I heard,” Adama says, gesturing for her to sit.  
  
Kara stands instead, pacing. “I saw something out there, something I can’t explain, but I know where Earth is now. I can feel it in the distance.”  
  
“You can feel it?” His voice is raw with disappointment.  
  
“I just need you to let me take us there.”  
  
He rests his elbows on his knees, his head falling as the weight of the worlds returns. “Explain it to me, Kara. What happened to you out there?”  
  
She fumbles for the words. “What should happen to everyone.”  
  
Adama shakes his head. “What does that mean?”  
  
Kara smiles, grace in her eyes. “Clarity. Love. I understood for the first time...maybe ever... I could see everything, all the cycles. That there’s a choice between the way things have always been and the way things could be--and I have to make it.”  
  
His eyes beg for reason. “That doesn’t make sense.”  
  
She shrugs. “Does it have to?”  
  
Adama’s jaw sets. “We’re two jumps from the nebula, from the next clue to Earth. Gaeta’s setting in the course.”  
  
“We’re only going  _there_  because of a vision!” Kara protests. “You say you don’t believe, but you know that’s not true. You’ve always had faith in me!”  
  
His eyes close. “That may be true, but this--you’ve never been like this before.”  
  
“No.” And at least she can agree to that. “I haven’t.”  
  
Adama nods. “We’ll be at the nebula tomorrow morning.”  
  
Kara sighs in frustration, clenches her teeth. “At least let me take a Raptor and find Leoben. He’s alive. I know it.”  
  
Now the Admiral grimaces. “He’s a Cylon, Starbuck. There are plenty more.”  
  
She stares at him, wondering suddenly if they’re really ready for Earth. Wondering if she’ll ever be able to tell him the other truths she learned in the maelstrom. “He’s not,” she says firmly, “like anyone else in the universe. And I love him. And he’s alive.”  
  
He meets her gaze without understanding. “No.”  
  
  
Kara fumes as she makes her way to her quarters, to their quarters. She can hear the music, can feel its purpose so intensely that the others’ refusal to believe feels like a violation.  
  
Her message to Leoben is still there on the wall: two of them, together in the storm. For the first time she understands what it meant, and tears spring to her eyes. He might be gone. Earth might be a lost cause.  
  
“Don’t give up,” Daniel says softly. “You knew it would be hard.”  
  
Kara nods sharply. “Don’t worry, I made my choice.”  
  
“Oh, Kara,” he says, and she can hear his smile, “I’m not worried.”  
  
She sighs, exhausted with the scope of the task ahead. With a final glance at the mandala, she sinks down onto her bed.  
  
She sleeps that night, alone, and wakes without even dreams for comfort.  
  
  
Her protests that she already knows which way to go are ignored again through the first jump, even as Kara clutches her head in pain and sudden fear. She tries not to scream in frustration as she heads to the hangar deck, grabs a wrench and pours her energy into one of the scrap Vipers.  
  
As they prepare for the final jump, her head starts to pound, the first quiet notes playing in her mind. Kara starts to hum along, and suddenly the universe seems to come into alignment. Kara sighs, smiling. The world contracts to a point.  
  
Then the shock of the jump fades away and she can feel Leoben, so close that it seems that by simply reaching out she could touch him. She starts to laugh.  
  
“Condition One!” Adama’s voice barks over the comms. “Enemy baseships in immediate proximity. All pilots man your ships!” As one every person in the hangar leaps into motion. Kara’s across the deck and into a Raptor before anyone can stop her.  
  
Athena catches her eyes through the window, but Kara shakes her head, grinning, and Sharon orders the knuckledraggers to get the Raptor in the air.  
  
She flies alone through the black, navigating the Raiders and Vipers without thinking, lost in the sensation of Leoben’s nearness and the building of the music and the promise that the universe has made her.  
  
Her Raptor, like the others, is outfitted for landing in baseships, and after a few tense moments she gets inside without being shot down. For the first time, Kara’s not lost. She runs through the basestar, not slowing down long enough even to check around the corners before she turns. Behind her she can hear footsteps steps echoing. She races faster.  
  
Finally she finds the door, flings herself through it and forces it shut with her body.  
  
For a moment Kara rests, breathless, against the wall. Then she looks around the room in wonder and a little horror: at the hundreds of tubs, at the lifeless bodies.  
  
One comes to life; Leoben gasps his first breath.  
  
Kara runs to him, twines her fingers with his as she smiles brilliantly. “I’m here.”


	13. Chapter 13

Leoben opens his eyes and she’s there, smiling down at him, vivid and alive. And she’s changed, too, but she’s still Kara.  
  
A noise echoes down the hall and Kara glances away. “Come on,” she says quickly, “we have to go. Now!” She hauls him up by his hands and Leoben scrambles into a set of clothes as Kara checks her gun and peers out the door.  
  
He clears his throat, trying out new vocal chords. He puts thoughts of his last body, comatose with grief, out of his mind.  
  
Kara turns, hearing him, and grins. She kisses him once, hard. “Let’s go.”  
  
“Wait,” he says urgently, as she starts to move. "There are others who need our help.”  
  
She takes one more quick look, then nods. “Fine. Quickly, though.”  
  
Leoben jerks his head in the right direction and leads the way. As he reaches to open the door to the Final Five’s cell, he pauses, looking warily at Kara. “There won’t be time right now to explain.”  
  
She shakes her head in confusion. “Don’t worry.”  
  
He opens the door and for just a moment Kara does stare, something like awe in her eyes. Then she bursts into action. “We’re here!” she calls out to them. “We have to get back to Galactica RFN, so everybody move!”  
  
They run through the halls as a group, stopping twice while Kara takes down groups of fours and fives armed with assault rifles. Leoben waves the others into the Raptor, then climbs in himself, sealing the hatch as Kara darts in after them.  
  
Vipers and missiles are swarming as they emerge from the baseship, and Kara whoops as she rolls the Raptor out of the way of a nuke that passes them and tears into the hangar they’ve just left. The baseship explodes in a cacophony of light.  
  
In the back of the Raptor, Ellen leans against Saul’s shoulder, holding his hand. “It’s over, then,” she sighs.  
  
Kara turns to looks at her, and Leoben frowns in confusion at how calm Kara is in the face of this revelation. “Don’t worry,” she tells the Five, “the hard part’s done.”  
  
  
The battle quiets behind them once the baseship is gone, and Kara lands the Raptor just ahead of the Viper wing. The minute she opens the hatch, the entire deck freezes, staring in shock at the crowd of people behind her.  
  
Figursky finally reaches for a phone. “Admiral,” he says, “You’d better get down here.”  
  
For a while there’s chaos as Bill and Laura and the others arrive. Adama protests wildly that these five could ever be Cylons, until Tigh pulls him into a hug.  
  
Caprica emerges from a corridor and runs toward Leoben, throws her arms around him. He strokes her back, lets her cling. After a moment Sharon barrels into them and he’s holding them both. They’re back on the shores of Caprica’s lake, surrounded by silence and peace. Athena’s eyes are full of tears as she looks up at him.  
  
Caprica blinks her own eyes clear. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she orders.  
  
He shakes his head, squeezes his sisters close for another moment.  
  
When he opens his eyes, back on the hangar deck, he can see Kara watching all of it with a fond smile: Bill hugging Saul, Athena crossing the deck to embrace Tyrol, Laura with Tory wrapped in her arms. Leoben watches her. He still can’t quite believe that she’s more than a vision, that if he reached out and stroked her hair, it would be soft beneath his fingers.  
  
When Barolay finally lets Sam go, he turns to Kara, reaches out and pulls her into his arms. Leoben stares. Where Sam’s arm was once tattooed is now bare skin, reborn without the physical damage of his last life. Kara doesn’t have a tattoo either.  
  
“It's good to see you,” Sam says softly.  
  
“Got used to me saving your ass?” Kara teases. As she speaks, Leoben’s eyes flicker over her face. He can’t keep himself from watching her, from drinking in every word she says, no matter to whom.  
  
Sam laughs. “Something like that.”  
  
Kara catches Leoben’s gaze, and nods. With a smile at Sam she steps away, approaches Leoben with joy in her eyes.  
  
“I missed you,” she says tenderly.  
  
He can hardly contain it. He nods.  
  
And then she presses close to him, kissing him with all the love he’s always known she’d feel one day. His arms circle her, holding her against him as he savors the feel of her, her smell and taste. Around them the room shifts with surprise and startlement and Helo’s jovial laughter. Leoben doesn’t bother to look. She’s in his arms.  
  
The Viper pilots return then, victorious and exuberant, and the chaos intensifies. Leoben doesn’t let Kara go even as it swirls around them, but finally he steps back enough to gaze down at her wonderingly. “How is this possible?” he asks softly.  
  
She shakes her head, eyes bright. “I don’t even know where to start.”  
  
Ellen clears her throat beside them. “I think I do.”  
  
*  
  
Ellen leads them to her old quarters, now Kara’s. Leoben follows her in, his hand on Kara’s waist. Caprica and Gaius, Helo and Athena have come, too. And Sam. Leoben can feel pressure building around them, the foreshadowing of something about to be revealed.  
  
Ellen lets out a short laugh as she settles on the edge of the bed, smiling at him, at his sisters. “Well,” she starts. “Look at you.”  
  
Sam lays a hand on her shoulder, and they share a look of quiet pride. Then Ellen turns to the group.  
  
“I was born on a planet called Earth,” she begins. She pauses as the others gasp in startlement. Kara strokes Leoben’s knuckles and he realizes he’s gripping her hand.  
  
“The way our oldest stories went, the thirteenth tribe, the tribe of Cylons, left in a different direction from the human tribes and founded Earth. And the reason the tribes left Kobol was forgotten.”  
  
Ellen opens her mouth and searches for the words, then stops and smiles, reaching out for Sam and Caprica’s hands, waiting until they’ve formed a loose circle.  
  
The projection is like any other, yet her mind is different. Leoben puzzles over it for a moment as he surveys the memory she’s built around them.  
  
“Ellen,” a man’s voice says softly, and Leoben turns. They’re in a lab, and before them a younger, calmer Ellen is pipetting samples of something. At the sight of the man, she shrieks, dropping a glass tube to the floor. She stumbles back a few feet in shock.  
  
“Dad?” she whispers.  
  
Leoben’s eyes dart to the man before her: John Cavil.  
  
“Ellen.” His voice is wistful, gentle. “There’s something I need you to do for me. Something is coming and you have a role to play.”  
  
From another room two others enter, joking and jostling. Ellen twists rapidly to see Galen and Tory, and when she turns back her father is gone. She starts to tremble, rubbing a hand over her eyes.  
  
“Everything okay?” Tory asks, kneeling to pick up the pieces of broken glass.  
  
Ellen nods mutely, staring into the distance.  
  
Her voice washes over Leoben as he watches the scene play out. “We had already built our own Centurions on Earth, and a great war was underway. When my father told me our race would be lost unless we rebuilt resurrection, I listened. I got my team to work on it, and I got my husband to prepare the ship we’d need.” She pauses, and Leoben slips out of the projection long enough to look at her, to see the regret in her eyes.  
  
“It seemed,” Ellen continues, “that the Gods--or God, or whatever--had given humanity something on Kobol, the knowledge of how to pluck a soul from the stream. And humans had used that gift to make slaves, to make thinking, feeling creatures that would do their bidding.”  
  
Helo wraps an arm around Athena’s shoulders, pulling her close against him.  
  
“We had done the same thing on Earth, and the…whatever…was angry at us.” Ellen rolls her eyes at the idea of the Gods, but an old sadness lingers on her face. “But somehow we’d been chosen, to keep it from happening again. My father showed me what I needed to know get the five of us off of Earth and heading for the Colonies. He’d been gone for years, had died when I was a little girl, but he said I had to do it and I believed him.”  
  
Her memories swirl around them: the bombings, the long hours spent building the technology they’d need to survive. Grief pervades everything they’re seeing—all of it is gone, lost to the crimes of one race against another.  
  
Sam squeezes Ellen’s shoulder. “It was a hard time.”  
  
Kara stiffens beside Leoben, looking sharply at Sam. “Who did you see?”  
  
He smiles sadly, and suddenly they’re on a beach, waves lapping in the background and Sam with a guitar in his arms. The sky above them rolls darkly toward evening, and the wind is cool. Sam plays a few chords that seem almost familiar as Leoben listens. Kara is squeezing his head so hard it hurts, the sensation streaming from reality into the projection.  
  
“Sammy!” a girl calls, racing across the sand, and he stops playing, tears in his eyes as he looks at her. She’s barely out of childhood, her hair in a long braid down her back. She kneels on the sand at his feet and rests her cheek against his knee. “Don’t stop,” she whispers. “I need you to write the rest of it.”  
  
“My little sister,” Sam says roughly, answering Kara’s question. “She died in one of the early Centurion attacks.”  
  
He plays there on the beach, a song that seems to mourn everything happening to his planet, then race away from it, building into something joyful.  
  
The younger Ellen wanders up across the beach. Her eyes are dark with confusion and grief as she stops before him, entranced. Sam looks up at her, but doesn’t stop playing. In the distance, a bomb explodes.  
  
“We had no choice but to leave,” Sam says, anguish lingering in his voice.  
  
Athena stares at him hard, hand tight in Helo’s. “But what about Earth?”  
  
Sam shakes his head, bereft, and then they’re standing on it. In the same place, a month or a year later. Perhaps that very day. Around them the landscape is dead and gray and Athena starts to sob. Sam says the words even though they’re unnecessary now. “It was destroyed as we left. Nuked. We can’t go back there any more than Caprica.”  
  
“It was all for nothing.” Athena’s words are muffled by the fabric of Helo’s jacket.  
  
Leoben can’t quite breathe, can’t quite make sense of it. “It was all…” He turns to Kara, tears in his eyes. “You died for nothing.” There are tears on his cheeks, and she pulls him into her arms. Against all reason he can feel her smiling against his cheek.  
“The story’s not over yet,” Kara whispers, like it’s a promise.  
  
Ellen clears her throat. “It took centuries to make the journey. We were in stasis for most of it, and when we finally got here they’d already begun the war.” The projection is tinged with bitterness again, as the final five take in the destruction Centurions and humans have wrought on one another by the final days of the first war. In the dark of a baseship, the five of them argue with the Centurions about peace.  
  
“You have a soul!” Ellen protests. “That means you get to make choices. That’s what you’re fighting for, isn’t? You can make a better one than this.”  
  
The Centurion speaks with a girl’s voice that Leoben’s never heard. “We want justice for our people. We want to live freely in the light of God’s love.”  
  
Ellen shakes her head, sadder and wiser than the girl in the lab. “No one gets that from war. No one. Not ever, Zoe. I know you never wanted this.”  
  
For a long time there’s silence.  
  
“Can you give us back--can you give us bodies? Can your technology do that?”  
  
Ellen stares at her warily. “I think so.”  
  
“And souls?” Its red eye shifts relentlessly back and forth.  
  
John appears behind her, nodding. “It’s the only way, Ellen.”  
  
Ellen looks longingly at him, then back at Zoe. “I’ll try.”  
  
The projection fades even as Leoben tries to reach into it, tries to understand the other layers of memories. Ellen closes her mind. “What they wanted was you,” she tells them, smiling fondly at Caprica. “The chance to be more human, to understand what it meant. How could we say no to that?”  
  
“The angels,” Sam says softly, “helped us choose the souls.”  
  
Ellen gives a sad little laugh. “After the first one. After I failed to find my father.”  
  
Sam wraps an arm around her shoulders, squeezing her against his side. “They believed you were a way to lasting peace.” He looks back and forth among Caprica and Athena and Leoben. “You were made to be loved, to help end the war.” As they listen they can see his memory playing out, Tory and Ellen and Galen lifting newborn Cylons from their amniotic fluid, smiling in excitement.  
  
“And you succeeded,” Ellen says, smiling at them with motherly pride.  
  
Leoben feels the stream starting to sing inside of him again, feels awareness approaching, something beyond what he’s ever seen.  
  
“Cavil didn’t understand,” Ellen says tightly. Her eyes are bright with anger and guilt. “He never understood what we were working for, and he tried to take it all away. Wiped our minds, scattered us across the twelve worlds.” For a moment they get a glimpse of Ellen screaming, fighting as a Centurion guns down Saul. Then she sharply cuts it off. “And even when we died on New Caprica, he left us with no choice but to rebuild resurrection.”  
  
“But it was real?” Caprica says, her voice trembling. “There was something beyond you at work?” Her fingers are laced tightly through Gaius’.  
  
Sam nods. “I can’t explain it, but yeah. It was real.”  
  
Visions are starting to tug at him—storms and children and splashes of paint—as Leoben forces out the words. Athena is still crying silently in Helo’s arms, devastated at losing Earth. He can feel the loss rising in him too, needs an answer. “But why? Why did Kara die?”  
  
Ellen shakes her head, shrugging helplessly. “Once you were made, our part was done. We never saw them again.” She winces in sympathy. “I don’t know.”  
  
Kara smiles, turning to Leoben and laying a hand against his cheek, brushing away his tears. “It’s alright. I do.”


	14. Chapter 14

Kara reaches for the words. Already it feels like a dream, like a myth she heard as a child. The girl who went into the heavens and came back with knowledge from the Gods, changed, chosen. The clearest image she could offer them would be the starscape where she found herself, the rapid movement of the stream around her almost imperceptible at such a scale.  
  
“Kara,” Daniel says softly.  
  
She looks up at him; the others don’t. “You remember enough.”  
  
She holds his gaze for a long moment, then begins. “I had a vision as I flew into the storm. I saw myself as a kid, the day my father left...and I saw what happened to him, that it wasn’t that he didn’t love me but because he did. Because he was a Cylon and he wanted to protect me...” Kara doesn’t hear the others’ gasps, or feel Leoben’s suddenly tight grip on her arm, she just sees Daniel’s face as he smiles. “And so I went into the storm...”  
  
As she struggles for what happened next, he steps closer. “Here’s what you say,” he begins. “There are some things humanity has never understood.”  
  
“There are some things humanity has never understood,” Kara repeats, and as she continues his words flow from her lips. “The angels Ellen saw, and Sam - they don’t have a word for what they are, but we call them many things. Angels, gods, it doesn’t really matter. On Kobol they lived more closely with humans, and civilization flourished. But then the angels gave them the gift of shepherding souls, and the humans abused it. So we were sent away, Cylons and humans separated for our own good.” Ellen nods.  
  
“Some of them, the angels, believed what had happened was their fault, that they owed it to us to restore unity. And to do that they needed to help us become one people, capable of loving each other, of merging the human and Cylon families back into one whole.”  
  
Kara’s eyes dart around the circle, and she speaks for herself now. “I don’t remember it well, but I was there. I was beside them on the banks of the stream for just a little while. They’d been waiting for thousands of years for a hybrid to be born, a blend of human and Cylon, someone who could lead us all to Earth.” She nods to Athena and Helo. “It might have been Hera, if it wasn’t me. They know better than to count on one way forward. There were eight new Cylons made, seven with souls chosen to be capable of loving, of being loved. Some of them have.” Her eyes dart to Caprica, “And we can have a real future on Earth because their children will make us one people.” Caprica smiles a small, proud smile.  
  
“They told you where Earth is?” Leoben asks.  
  
Kara turns to him, and the belief in his eyes makes her want to cry. This is why she flew into the storm: to see this hope on his face, to offer him this gift. She smiles. “We always knew.”  
  
“Yes,” Daniel says softly.  
  
She looks up at him, standing over her, and for a moment she’s certain that he isn’t her father, but that it’s his song she can hear in her mind. That he’s the one who entrusted this secret to Sam, and to Daniel, and to Kara.  
  
“Go home,” he murmurs, and his eyes are full of love.  
  
*  
  
In the end it’s simpler than she expected. For all of Kara’s fears about Adama when he was railing against her visions, her love of a Cylon, she knows as soon as she reaches his quarters that Tigh’s return has changed him. Their laughter echoes out into the hall, and when Kara steps inside Bill’s eyes seem light for the first time in months.  
  
He shakes his head at her, in awe and pride, then steps forward to pull her into his arms. “Thank you,” he says roughly. Kara hugs him back.  
  
Then she lays it out for him, Tigh filling in the details: the story of the final five, the truth of her own identity. She avoids the question of angels or gods or exactly where she went, but she explains that Sam and the others have always known the coordinates to Earth without understanding what they were.  
  
Bill sits down shakily, staring up at her.  
  
“Are you ready to go?” Kara asks, smiling.  
  
He drops his gaze for a moment. “I lied to you once,” he says sternly. “I told you that Earth was real, that we were going there.”  
  
Kara nods. “You said something else too, right before the worlds ended. You said we’d never asked if we deserved to survive.” She waits until he meets her eyes. “It’s only real, we can only go there, because something in the universe believes that either we deserve it or...or we’re capable of it. Of deserving it. As long as we go together.”  
  
Bill looks across the room at Tigh, his oldest friend, a Cylon, and then up at her. His eyes are bright with emotion as he nods. “Then let’s go.”  
  
*  
  
They sit in stunned silence at the edge of Caprica’s lake. Leoben’s feet are bare and the gentle wind-stirred waves wash clear water over his toes.  
  
Finally Caprica speaks. “It’s true,” she says with quiet pleasure. “I’m going to have a baby.”  
  
Athena grins and hugs Caprica close. When she lets go, Leoben puts his arms her in turn. “You’re going to be a wonderful mother,” he promises.  
  
“Have you seen that?” she asks eagerly.  
  
He pauses, then shakes his head. In the midst of Kara’s revelations has come another. “The things I’ve seen - I’ve had glimpses into the stream, visions of what the angels see.”  
  
Athena nods. “The past, the future.”  
  
“No.” Leoben tilts his head, still trying to understand. “The past perhaps, but--the future is uncertain.” He frowns in confusion. “Kara died and returned, and I never knew she would.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” Caprica says.  
  
He shakes his head, clearing his face, then rests a hand on her cheek. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is--I believe you’ll be a good mother.”  
  
His sister smiles, tears in her eyes. “Kara was right,” she tells him. “God loves us. God gave us this love, to go out into the universe and share with one another.” Caprica lays her hand over his. “Of course she came back to you.”  
  
*  
  
A few hours later, Kara makes her way to the bridge. Everyone has gathered there: the final five, the human and Cylon leaders.  
  
“There must be some way out of here,” Sam says beside her, smirking, and Kara turns to grin at him.  
  
“It’s about frakking time we found Earth,” she answers.  
  
Sam shakes his head. “I still can’t believe it. All those years ago, when Natasha came back to me on that beach...she promised me that writing that song would help end the war. And the whole way back to the Colonies I was so lost, so angry, because it made no difference.”  
  
Kara takes his hand, squeezing gently. “It will now.”  
  
Sam nods. “Yeah. I know.”  
  
She lets go, and reaches for the FTL controls. It took a fair amount of arguing to convince Gaeta and Gaius this wouldn’t be a blind jump, and her heart races slightly as she presses the notes into the keypad. Then she looks up at Leoben, watching her from across the room, and her heart calms. She glances to Adama, waiting for the order. He gives it. She twists the key.  
  
*  
  
Athena and Helo land the Raptor on the grass with only the barest hiss of the engines. Kara unbuckles herself first, then reaches for Hera’s straps. She shifts the child onto her hip, glancing back at the others.  
  
“Go on,” Helo says, nodding, and Kara opens the hatch.  
  
The air is fresh and warm. Kara hugs Hera close as she takes the first step out into the tall grass. They’re in a wide field. In the distance there are trees, and beyond that are mountains.  
  
“It’s the first day of the world,” Kara whispers into the child’s hair, remembering the story from temple, all those years ago. Hera squirms and Kara looks down into her face. She’s just a child. Just a little girl who wants to run free. Kara sets her lightly on her feet, and holds on to the toddler’s hand as they begin to explore their new world.  
  
*  
  
Leoben can still feel the stream, the way it weaves around him and through him, but it’s quieter now. The urgent need to guide Kara is gone. And so he waits for her again, as she wanders with Hera, as she heads off with the scouting party to find better landing sites for the fleet and the other ships that will surely follow. Already they’ve been in touch with those left on New Caprica and the scattered baseships loyal to Natalie. Roslin and Natalie have promised the coordinates to everyone willing to live in peace. It’s an offer no one has yet refused.

Caprica stops to see him a moment, Gaius beside her, and they head out to explore, hand in hand. He remembers envying what they had once; he loves them for showing him it was possible.  
  
The final five are among the first landing parties as well. Tigh and Sam leave to help the fleet scout the planet. Tory stands frozen on the spot as she steps out of a Heavy Raider, staring around at their new home. Galen holds her as she cries. Ellen emerges last, and heads toward Leoben.  
  
“You did it,” she says, full of motherly pride.  
  
Leoben shakes his head. “It was Kara who led us here.”  
  
She smiles knowingly. “You had a role to play in this.” Ellen turns, gazing out across the rolling waves of green. “They still thought, when they sent us back to the Colonies, that humans could be trusted with the power of creation. And then, after what happened with John, they understood. There are some things too powerful for us, some things we shouldn’t have the ability to do.”  
  
Leoben nods, waiting for her to continue.  
  
Ellen glances at him. “So they took it away. When I had created your body, they gave you life.” She reaches out to take his hand. “And look what you’ve done with it.”  
  
They stand together a while, at peace, taking in the new world. Then Ellen leaves and Leoben sits down in the grass. He has always been waiting for her.  
  
*  
  
Kara finds him there, asleep, as the sky darkens toward purple. The air is still warm, so she grabs some blankets and rations from the Raptor and waves to Athena and Helo as they return to Galactica for the night.  
  
She settles in the grass beside Leoben, and traces his face with the tips of her fingers, searching for what’s changed since he she kissed him goodbye and flew into the storm.  
  
His eyes flutter open, and Leoben catches her hand. He holds on hard. “You came back,” he says softly.  
  
“Yes,” Kara answers, and leans down to kiss him. His arms wrap around her, and Kara presses even closer as the heat between them builds. After everything that has passed, they’re both eager for this reunion. They strip away each other’s clothing, their new bodies demanding to be touched, to be consecrated to each other. The virgin earth is soft under Kara’s back as Leoben finally enters her, and she gives herself to him without holding anything back.  
  
  
“Tell me again,” Leoben murmurs later, resting his head on Kara’s shoulder, and she laughs. The broken grass beneath them smells sweet and sharp, and she feels completely alive.  
  
“One more time,” she teases, but her tone is gentle. Kara runs her fingers lightly down his arm, watching the fine hairs rise under her touch. Everything seems like a miracle now.  
  
“I could hear the music as I flew into the storm,” she says. “I could feel him reaching out for me. And then I was there, in the quiet of the stream between the worlds.”  
  
“With your father?” he prompts.  
  
“Or not my father. But I could feel that he loved me like a daughter. That I’d always been loved.”  
  
“He showed you the stream.”  
  
“Mmm.” Kara sighs, closing her eyes and seeing again the brilliant colors, the abstraction of space and time all around her, perceived not with human eyes but with greater understanding. “It was like watching what had happened and knowing it, all at once. I knew what they’d wanted, what they regretted and what they loved. I could see what they saw, the whole inevitable stream of time shifted just enough to create me. And Hera, and Caprica’s son.”  
  
“And then they showed you your destiny.”  
  
Now she shifts, looking down into his face. “No.” She grins.  
  
Leoben’s eyes darken in concern at the change in the story. “Kara?”  
  
She smiles at his expression. She’s been saving this part just for him. “And then they gave me a choice.” Kara opens her mind, letting him see into her memory. Into that moment, choosing between peace like she’d never known and the chance to come back to him, to all of them, and lead them to Earth. “The universe is built on redundancy,” she tells him, and it means something different now. “Hera could have led everyone, or the next child, or the next. What’s another ten or twenty years to someone who sees millenia?”  
  
Leoben reaches up to push her hair out of her eyes and Kara catches his palm against her cheek. The evening air is cool on their bare skin and his hand is warm. “I told you,” she whispers. “I don’t believe in destiny. I made a choice.”  
  
He nods, sliding his other arm around her and pulling her back down to him, kissing her. But then he releases her lips, meets her eyes. “Why didn’t I know?” he asks softly. “I was lost...I thought I’d done it all wrong.”  
  
Kara flinches at the lingering rawness of his pain. “You knew enough. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have spent my whole life running from the mandala.” She shrugs. “Until I decided, there was nothing you could have seen.”  
  
Leoben nods, accepting her words even if they leave him feeling less certain than he ever has. “You came back to me,” he sighs, and it’s enough for now.  
  
She opens her mouth, then stops. “But different.” Kara lays her hands flat on his chest. “He told me what I’d have to do, that it wouldn’t be easy, that there would still be conflict and hate and everything else that humans bring. He told me that I could stay there if I wanted to. But you love me. And I love you.” She looks down at Leoben, grass in his hair, and can’t ever remember being this happy. “It was what made Earth a possibility, and I couldn’t walk away from that.” She splays her fingers. “So they remade me, from the atoms of the universe. Unbroken.”  
  
Leoben takes her hands reverently, kisses each knuckle. “Oh, Kara,” he whispers, and he smiles through his tears. They hold each other for a long time. Around them the sounds of the night are rising, animals and insects and the faintest chords of a song.  
  
“Do you know what comes next?” Leoben asks after a while. “I can’t see anything clearly.”  
  
Kara smiles, her face bright in the moonlight. “I think now we live. And try not to frak-up so badly we need divine intervention.”  
  
He laughs, kisses her as joy swells through him, as the minor themes resolve and the music reaches a crescendo. Kara responds, kissing him harder until Leoben rolls them over, his body pressing her into the grass, into the fertile ground of their new world. Over his shoulder she can see the stars coming out, familiar patterns shining down on them. The night is cloudless, free of storms.  
  
 **The End**


End file.
